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Not From Detroit With thanks to Richard Matheson and Richard Christian
Matheson Outside it was cold and wet and windy. The storm rattled the
shack, slid like razor blades through the window, door and wall cracks, but it
wasn't enough to make any difference to the couple. Sitting before the
crumbling fireplace in their creaking rocking chairs, shawls across their
knees, fingers entwined, they were warm. A bucket behind them near the kitchen sink collected water
dripping from a hole in the roof. The drops had long since passed the noisy stage of sounding
like steel bolts falling on tin, and were now gentle
plops. The old couple were husband and wife; had been for over
fifty years. They were comfortable with one another and seldom spoke. Mostly
they rocked and looked at the fire as it flickered shadows across the room. Finally
Margie spoke. "Alex," she said, "I hope I die before you." Alex stopped rocking. "Did you say what I thought you
did?" "I said, I hope I die before you." She wouldn't
look at him, just the fire. "It's selfish, I know, but I hope I do. I
don't want to live on with you gone. It would be like cutting out my heart and
making me walk around. Like one of them zombies." "There are the children," he said. "If I
died, they'd take you in." "I'd just be in the way. I love them, but I don't want
to do that. They got their own lives. I'd just as soon die before you. That
would make things simple." "Not simple for me," Alex said. "I don't want
you to die before me. So how about that? We're both selfish, aren't we?" She smiled. "Well, it ain't a
thing to talk about before bedtime, but it's been on my mind, and I had to get
it out." "Been thinking on it too, honey. Only natural we would.
We ain't spring chickens anymore." "You're healthy as a horse, Alex Brooks. Mechanic work
you did all your life kept you strong. Me, I got the bursitis and the miseries and I'm tired all the time. Got the old age
bad." Alex started rocking again. They stared into the fire.
"We're going to go together, hon," he said. "I feel it. That's
the way it ought to be for folks like us." "I wonder if I'll see him coming. Death, I mean." "What?" "My grandma used to tell me she seen him the night her
daddy died." "You've never told me this." "Ain't a subject I like. But
Grandma said this man in a black buggy slowed down out front of their house,
cracked his whip three times, and her daddy was gone in instants. And she said
she'd heard her grandfather tell how he had seen Death when he was a boy. Told
her it was early morning and he was up, about to start
his chores, and when he went outside he seen this man dressed in black walk by
the house and stop out front. He was carrying a stick over his shoulder with a
checkered bundle tied to it, and he looked at the house and snapped his fingers
three times. A moment later they found my grandfather's brother, who had been
sick with the smallpox, dead in bed." "Stories, hon. Stories. Don't get yourself worked up
over a bunch of old tall tales. Here, I'll heat us some milk." Alex stood, laid the shawl in the chair, went over to put
milk in a pan and heat it. As he did, he turned to watch Margie's back. She was
still staring into the fire, only she wasn't rocking. She was just watching the
blaze and, Alex knew, thinking about dying. After the milk they went to bed, and soon Margie was asleep,
snoring like a busted chainsaw. Alex found he could not rest. It was partly due
to the storm, it had picked up in intensity. But it
was mostly because of what Margie had said about dying. It made him feel lonesome. Like her, he wasn't so much afraid of dying, as he was of
being left alone. She had been his heartbeat for fifty years, and without her,
he would only be going through motions of life, not living. God, he prayed silently. When we go, let us go together. He
turned to look at Margie. Her face looked unlined and strangely young. He was
glad she could turn off most anything with sleep. He, on the other hand, could
not. Maybe I'm just hungry. He slid out of bed, pulled on his pants, shirt and house
shoes; those silly things with the rabbit face and ears his granddaughter had
bought him. He padded silently to the kitchen. It was not only the kitchen, it
served as a den, living room, and dining room. The house was only three rooms
and a closet, and one of the rooms was a small bathroom. It was times like this
that Alex thought he could have done better by Margie. Gotten her a bigger
house, for one thing. It was the same house where they had raised their kids,
the babies sleeping in a crib here in the kitchen. He sighed. No matter how hard he had worked, he seemed to
stay in the same place. A poor place. He went to the refrigerator and took out a half-gallon of
milk, drank directly from the carton. He put the carton back and watched the water drip into the bucket.
It made him mad to see it. He had let the little house turn into a shack since
he retired, and there was no real excuse for it. Surely, he wasn't that tired.
It was a wonder Margie didn't complain more. Well, there was nothing to do about it tonight. But he vowed
that when dry weather came, he wouldn't forget about it this time. He'd get up
there and fix that damn leak. Quietly, he rummaged a pan from under the cabinet. He'd have
to empty the bucket now if he didn't want it to run over before morning. He ran
a little water into the pan before substituting it for the bucket so the drops
wouldn't sound so loud. He opened the front door, went out on the porch, carrying
the bucket. He looked out at his mud-pie yard and his old, red wrecker, his
white logo on the side of the door faded with time: ALEX BROOKS WRECKING AND
MECHANIC SERVICE. Tonight, looking at the old warhorse, he felt sadder than
ever. He missed using it the way it was meant to be used. For work. Now it was
nothing more than transportation. Before he retired, his tools and hands made a
living. Now nothing. Picking up a Social Security check was all that was left. Leaning over the edge of the porch, he poured the water into
the bare and empty flower bed. When he lifted his head and looked at his yard
again, and beyond to Highway 59, he saw a light. Headlights, actually, looking
fuzzy in the rain, like filmed-over amber eyes. They were way out there on the
highway, coming from the south, winding their way toward him, moving fast. Alex thought that whoever was driving that crate was crazy.
Cruising like that on bone-dry highways with plenty of sunshine would have been
dangerous, but in this weather, they were asking for a crackup. As the car neared, he could see it was long, black and
strangely shaped. He'd never seen anything like it, and he knew cars fairly
well. This didn't look like something off the assembly line from Detroit. It
had to be foreign. Miraculously, the car slowed without so much as a quiver or
screech of brakes and tires. In fact, Alex could not even hear its motor, just
the faint whispering sound of rubber on wet cement. The car came even of the house just as lightning flashed,
and in that instant, Alex got a good look at the driver, or at least the shape
of the driver outlined in the flash, and he saw that it was a man with a cigar
in his mouth and a bowler hat on his head. And the head was turning toward the
house. The lightning flash died, and now there was only the dark
shape of the car and the red tip of the cigar jutting at the house. Alex felt
stalactites of ice dripping down from the roof of his skull, extended through
his body and out of the soles of his feet. The driver hit down on his horn; three sharp blasts that
pricked at Alex's mind. Honk. (visions of
blooming roses, withering going black) Honk. (funerals
remembered, loved ones in boxes, going down) Honk. (worms crawling
through rotten flesh) Then came a silence louder than the horn blasts. The car
picked up speed again. Alex watched as its taillights winked away in the
blackness. The chill became less chill. The stalactites in his mind melted
away. But as he stood there, Margie's words of earlier that
evening came at him in a rush: "Seen Death once ... buggy slowed down out
front ... cracked
his whip three times ... man looked
at the house, snapped his fingers three
times ... found dead a moment later ..." Alex's throat felt as if a pine knot had lodged there. The
bucket slipped from his fingers, clattered on the porch and rolled into the
flowerbed. He turned into the house and walked briskly toward the bedroom, (Can't be,
just a wives' tale) his hands vibrating with fear. (Just a
crazy coincidence) Margie wasn't snoring. Alex grabbed her shoulder, shook her. Nothing. He rolled her on her back and screamed her name. Nothing. "Oh, baby. No." He felt for her pulse. None. He put an ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat (the
other half of his life bongos), and there was none. Quiet. Perfectly quiet. "You can't ..."
Alex said. "You can't ... We're suppose
to go together ... Got to be that way." And then it came to him. He had seen Death drive by, had seen
him heading on down the highway. He came to his feet, snatched his coat from the back of the
chair, raced toward the front door. "You won't have her," he said aloud.
"You won't." Grabbing the wrecker keys from the nail beside the door, he
leaped to the porch and dashed out into the cold and the rain. A moment later he was heading down the highway, driving fast
and crazy in pursuit of the strange car. The wrecker was old and not built for speed, but since he
kept it well tuned and it had new tires, it ran well over the wet highway. Alex
kept pushing the pedal gradually until it met the floor. Faster and faster and
faster. After an hour, he saw Death. Not the man himself but the license plate. Personalized and
clear in his headlights. It read: DEATH/EXEMPT. The wrecker and the strange black car were the only ones on
the road. Alex closed in on him, honked his horn. Death tootled back (not the
same horn sound he had given in front of Alex's house), stuck his arm out the
window and waved the wrecker around. Alex went, and when he was alongside the car, he turned his
head to look at Death. He could still not see him clearly, but he could make
out the shape of his bowler, and when Death turned to look at him, he could see
the glowing tip of the cigar, like a bloody bullet wound. Alex whipped hard right into the car, and Death swerved to
the right, then back onto the road. Alex rammed again. The black car's tires
hit roadside gravel and Alex swung closer, preventing it from returning to the
highway. He rammed yet another time, and the car went into the grass alongside
the road, skidded and went sailing down an embankment and into a tree. Alex braked carefully, backed off the road and got out of
the wrecker. He reached a small pipe wrench and a big crescent wrench out from
under the seat, slipped the pipe wrench into his coat pocket for insurance,
then went charging down the embankment waving the crescent. Death opened his door and stepped out. The rain had subsided and the moon was peeking through the clouds like a
shy child through gossamer curtains. Its light hit Death's round pink face and
made it look like a waxed pomegranate. His cigar hung from his mouth by a
tobacco strand. Glancing up the embankment, he saw an old but strong-looking
black man brandishing a wrench and wearing bunny slippers, charging down at
him. Spitting out the ruined cigar, Death stepped forward,
grabbed Alex's wrist and forearm, twisted. The old man went up and over, the
wrench went flying from his hand. Alex came down hard on his back, the breath
bursting out of him in spurts. Death leaned over Alex. Up close, Alex could see that the
pink face was slightly pocked and that some of the pinkness was due to makeup.
That was rich. Death was vain about his appearance. He was wearing a black
T-shirt, pants and sneakers, and of course his derby, which had neither been
stirred by the wreck nor by the ju-jitsu maneuver. "What's with you, man?" Death asked. Alex wheezed, tried to catch his breath. "You can't ...
have ... her." "Who? What are you talking about?" "Don't play ...
dumb with me." Alex raised up on one elbow, his wind
returning. "You're Death and you took my Margie's soul." Death straightened. "So you know
who I am. All right. But what of it? I'm only doing my job." "It ain't her time." "My list says it is, and my list is never wrong." Alex felt something hard pressing against his hip, realized
what it was. The pipe wrench. Even the throw Death had
put on him had not hurled it from his coat pocket. It had lodged there and the pocket had shifted beneath his hip, making his
old bones hurt all the worse. Alex made as to roll over, freed the pocket beneath him,
shot his hand inside and produced the pipe wrench. He hurled it at Death,
struck him just below the brim of the bowler and sent him stumbling back. This
time the bowler fell off. Death's forehead was bleeding. Before Death could collect himself, Alex was up and rushing.
He used his head as a battering ram and struck Death in the stomach, knocking
him to the ground. He put both knees on Death's arms, pinning them, clenched
his throat with his strong, old hands. "I ain't never hurt nobody
before," Alex said. "Don't want to now. I didn't want to hit you with
that wrench, but you give Margie back." Death's eyes showed no expression at first, but slowly a
light seemed to go on behind them. He easily pulled his arms out from under
Alex's knees, reached up, took hold of the old man's wrist and pulled the hands
away from his throat. "You old rascal," Death said. "You outsmarted
me." Death flopped Alex over on his side, then stood up.
Grinning, he turned, stooped to recover his bowler, but he never laid a hand on
it. Alex moved like a crab, scissoring his legs, and caught
Death from above and behind his knees, twisted, brought him down on his face. Death raised up on his palms and crawled from behind Alex's
legs like a snake, effortlessly. This time he grabbed the hat and put it on his
head and stood up. He watched Alex carefully. "I don't frighten you much, do I?" Death asked. Alex noted that the wound on Death's forehead had vanished.
There wasn't even a drop of blood. "No," Alex said. "You don't
frighten me much. I just want my Margie back." "All right," Death said. Alex sat bolt upright. "What?" "I said, all right. For a time. Not many have
outsmarted me, pinned me to the ground. I give you credit, and you've got
courage. I like that. I'll give her back. For a time. Come here." Death walked over to the car that was not from Detroit. Alex
got to his feet and followed. Death took the keys out of the ignition, moved to
the trunk, worked the key in the lock. It popped up with a hiss. Inside were stacks and stacks of matchboxes. Death moved his
hand over them, like a careful man selecting a special vegetable at the
supermarket. His fingers came to rest on a matchbox that looked to Alex no
different than the others. Death handed Alex the matchbox. "Her soul's in here,
old man. You stand over her bed, open the box. Okay?" "That's it?" "That's it. Now get out of here before I change my
mind. And remember, I'm giving her back to you. But just for a while." Alex started away, holding the matchbox carefully. As he
walked past Death's car, he saw the dents he had knocked in the side with his
wrecker were popping out. He turned to look at Death, who was closing the
trunk. "Don't suppose you'll need a tow out of here?" Death smiled thinly. "Not hardly." Alex stood over their bed; the bed where they had loved,
slept, talked and dreamed. He stood there with the matchbox in his hand, his
eyes on Margie's cold face. He ever so gently eased the box open. A small flash
of blue light, like Peter Pan's friend Tinkerbell, rushed out of it and hit
Margie's lips. She made a sharp inhaling sound and her chest rose. Her eyes
came open. She turned and looked at Alex and smiled. "My lands, Alex. What are you doing there, and
half-dressed? What have you been up to ...
is that a matchbox?" Alex tried to speak, but he found that he could not. All he
could do was grin. "Have you gone nuts?" she asked. "Maybe a little." He sat down on the bed and took
her hand. "I love you, Margie." "And I love you ...
You been drinking?" "No." Then came the overwhelming sound of Death's horn. One harsh
blast that shook the house, and the headbeams shone
brightly through the window and the cracks lit up the shack like a cheap
nightclub act. "Who in the world?" Margie asked. "Him. But he said ...
Stay here." Alex got his shotgun out of the closet. He went out on the
porch. Death's car was pointed toward the house, and the headbeams
seemed to hold Alex, like a fly in butter. Death was standing on the bottom step, waiting. Alex pointed the shotgun at him. "You
git. You gave her back. You gave your word." "And I kept it. But I said for a while." "That wasn't any time at all." "It was all I could give. My present." "Short time like that's worse than no time at
all." "Be good about it, Alex. Let her go. I got records and
they have to be kept. I'm going to take her anyway, you understand that?" "Not tonight, you ain't."
Alex pulled back the hammers on the shotgun. "Not tomorrow night neither.
Not anytime soon." "That gun won't do you any good, Alex. You know that.
You can't stop Death. I can stand here and snap my fingers three times, or
click my tongue, or go back to the car and honk my horn, and she's as good as
mine. But I'm trying to reason with you, Alex. You're a brave man. I did you a
favor because you bested me. I didn't want to just take her back without telling
you. That's why I came here to talk. But she's got to go. Now." Alex lowered the shotgun. "Can't ... can't
you take me in her place? You can do that, can't you?" "I ... I
don't know. It's highly irregular." "Yeah, you can do that. Take me. Leave Margie." "Well, I suppose." The screen door creaked open and Margie stood there in her
housecoat. "You're forgetting, Alex, I don't want to be left alone." "Go in the house, Margie," Alex said. "I know who this is: I heard you talking, Mr. Death. I
don't want you taking my Alex. I'm the one you came for. I ought to have the
right to go." There was a pause, no one speaking. Then Alex said,
"Take both of us. You can do that, can't you? I know I'm on that list of
yours, and pretty high up. Man my age couldn't have
too many years left. You can take me a little before my time, can't you? Well,
can't you?" *
* * Margie and Alex sat in their rocking chairs, their shawls
over their knees. There was no fire in the fireplace. Behind them the bucket
collected water and outside the wind whistled. They held hands. Death stood in
front of them. He was holding a King Edward cigar box. "You're sure of this?" Death asked. "You
don't both have to go." Alex looked at Margie, then back at Death. "We're sure," he said. "Do it." Death nodded. He opened the cigar box and held it out on one
palm. He used his free hand to snap his fingers. Once. (the wind picked
up, howled) Twice. (the rain beat
like drumsticks on the roof) Three times. (lightning
ripped and thunder roared) "And in you go," Death said. The bodies of Alex and Margie slumped
and their heads fell together between the rocking chairs. Their fingers were
still entwined. Death put the box under his arm and went out to the car. The
rain beat on his derby hat and the wind sawed at his bare arms and T-shirt. He
didn't seem to mind. Opening the trunk, he started to put the box inside, then
hesitated. He closed the trunk. "Damn," he said, "if I'm not getting to be a
sentimental old fool." He opened the box. Two blue lights rose out of it,
elongated, touched ground. They took on the shape of Alex and Margie. They
glowed against the night. "Want to ride up front?" Death asked. "That would be nice," Margie said. "Yes, nice," Alex said. Death opened the door and Alex and Margie slid inside. Death
climbed in behind the wheel. He checked the clipboard dangling from the dash.
There was a woman in a Tyler hospital, dying of brain damage. That would be his
next stop. He put the clipboard down and started the car that was not
from Detroit. "Sounds well-tuned," Alex said. "I try to keep it that way," Death said. They drove out of there then, and as they went,
Death broke into song. "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the
stream," and Margie and Alex chimed in with "Merrily, merrily,
merrily, merrily, life is but a dream." Off they went down the highway, the taillights fading, the
song dying, the black metal of the car melting into the fabric of night, and
then there was only the whispery sound of good tires on wet cement and finally
not even that. Just the blowing sound of the wind and the rain. "Not From Detroit" was originally published in 1988 in Midnight Graffiti. It later appeared in Bestsellers Guaranteed, a collection of
Lansdale's short stories published by Ace Books, and in High Cotton: Selected Short Stories of Joe R. Lansdale, published
by Golden Gryphon Press. "Not From Detroit"
© 1988 Joe R. Lansdale. Jump in your car and come as you are on Thursday, December 3,
for another touch of Mojo madness from Champion Joe R. Lansdale! |
