Three Miles Past Read online

  Three Miles Past

  Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Graham Jones

  This edition of Three Miles Past

  Copyright © 2012 by Nightscape Press, LLP

  “No Takebacks” originally appeared in Phantasmagorium Issue 1 (2011)

  Cover illustration and design by Boden Steiner

  Interior layout and design by Robert S. Wilson

  Edited by Robert S. Wilson

  All rights reserved.

  First Ebook Edition

  Nightscape Press, LLP

  http://www.nightscapepress.com

  Other Works by

  Stephen Graham Jones

  The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong

  All the Beautiful Sinners

  The Bird is Gone: A Manifesto

  Bleed into me: A book of Stories

  Demon Theory

  The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti

  Ledfeather

  It came from Del Rio

  The Ones that Got Away

  Seven Spanish Angels

  Zombie Bake-Off

  Growing up Dead in Texas

  for Randy Howard, for everything

  and for William Colton Hughes

  Interstate Love Affair

  No Takebacks

  The Coming of Night

  Story Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Barebones

  "When Hippocrates visited the 'mad Democritus' in Abders, he found him sitting in front of his house surrounded by dead, disemboweled birds. He was writing a treatise on insanity and was dissecting the birds in order to localize the . . . source of madness."—Mikhail Bakhtin

  "My head is full of monsters and I'm one of them."—Richard Kadrey

  Interstate Love Affair

  THE DERIDDER ROADKILL

  Unidentified, controversial remains discovered on the side of Highway 12 just outside Deridder, Louisiana in 1996, and subsequently either lost or taken. According to The Dequincy News, the remains expressed both canine and primate characteristics. The photographs support this. For many, the Deridder Roadkill established that the Cajun werewolf (loup-garou) wasn’t just legend. For others, the roadkill was a skunk-ape, or chupacabra, even a misplaced baboon. To the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the photographs are just morbid documentation of a large, brown Pomeranian dog.

  That’s one explanation.

  1.

  William drank three beers in his truck in the parking lot, just to get ready. He lined the cans up on the dash, looked through the second and third at the metal front door of the pound. The animal control trucks were nosed up to the building; it was almost five o’clock. William peeled the tab off a fourth beer, looked into it and shook his head no, because he knew he shouldn’t. Four was too many. He told himself not to be stupid. That there was no room for error. And then he laughed, killed the beer.

  The fifth and sixth were nothing, not after four, but then, balancing the sixth on the dash like a wall, William straightened his legs against the floorboard, pushing himself back into the seat: for a moment the cans had quit being cans, had become the cushions him and his brother used to build forts with in the living room.

  William hit himself in the side of the head until he was sure he wasn’t going to cry. He used a baby wipe from the glove compartment to stop the bleeding. Most people don’t know about baby wipes. William held the wet paper—fabric, almost—to his temple. It was cool, perfect. Then he held it over his mouth, breathed through it until he could breathe evenly again.

  The fourth beer was a mistake, he knew that now, but it was too late. It had to be today.

  Instead of leaving the cans on his dash, he dropped them over his shoulder, through the sliding rear glass. They landed in the bed. Any sound they made was muffled by the fiberglass camper shell. But they didn’t make any noise.

  William stepped down from the front seat and was almost to the wheelchair ramp of the pound when he had to go back, check to see if he’d locked the door of the truck. And then, just because he was there, he checked the passenger door too, and its vent window, and then the handle on the camper, then the camper itself.

  If he put his hands around his eyes, his nose to the black glass, he could see the silver cans in the bed of the truck, and if he looked into the cab, there were the classifieds, still open to Pets, four of the ads circled in blue, but he couldn’t spend all day in the parking lot.

  The same way William knew about baby wipes, he knew about this.

  He smiled and stepped away from the glass, faking a shrug for anybody watching, as if he’d just settled something with himself. There was nobody out there to see him. Just the same number of cars and animal control trucks there had been when he first pulled up.

  It was time.

  He nodded to himself, moving his neck the way he imagined someone with the last name Pinzer would, then remembered to keep the tips of his fingers in the tops of his pants pockets. Because if he didn’t, the pound attendant would keep looking at his hands, at William’s hands, and then William would start looking down to them too, until that was all he could do.

  Smile, he said to himself. People trust an easy face.

  He hooked the door open with his forearm, caught it with his shoulder, stepped in sideways.

  It was the usual waiting room—cast-off chairs, metal tables salvaged from the county’s overflow warehouse. The lamp was one that an attendant’s mothers had probably given them years ago, when she was updating her sitting room. The too-green plant would be from another attendant, who had pretended she’d bought it with the coffee money but had really paid for it herself, to liven the place up, keep her from slitting her wrists one night.

  William took it all in in a dismissive glance, noticed that his hand was in his beard.

  He lowered it slowly, his teeth set with the effort.

  Behind the desk, nobody. On the wall, certificates, awards, letters of thanks framed twenty years ago. Near the hall leading back to the barking, two clipboards. One from today, Monday, and one for the weekend.

  William swallowed, leaned toward the lists.

  The dog column for the weekend had thirty-nine dogs, each identified first by location, then tag, if there was one, then just description: 25-30lbs., black, white tail-tip. Probably Lab, Lab-mix. The dead, the run over, the already burned in the incinerator.

  William smiled, found his hand covering his mouth again, made it go back down.

  The girl who opened the door beside the lists stopped, pulled her breath in sharp, had to crane her head back to see all the way up to William’s face.

  William opened his mouth, stepped back, holding his hands up to show, to show her—

  She was looking to the metal door in the waiting room now, though. Then back up to William. “It was open?” she said, crinkling the corners of her eyes about how that shouldn’t have been the case.

  William nodded. She was twenty-three maybe, a rich caramel color, silver chain around her neck, holding a pink stone to the hollow of her throat. Otherwise, she was a nurse: green scrubs, yellow rubber gloves. Hair pulled back. It made her eyes better.

  Hands, William said to himself.

  They went back to their pockets, and he could tell from the way the caramel girl’s features softened that this was better. That what his hands in his pockets did to his shoulders, how they were round now, making him look stooped, embarrassed of his height—a lifetime of standing in the back row, a thousand old ladies asking for help with the top shelf—that he wasn’t a scary man in a flannel jacket anymore. Just William. Bill, Bill Pinzer.

  The girl nodded to the list with her mouth.

  “Any luck?” she said.

  William knew to pause before answering, and then not to a
nswer anyway, just shake his head no.

  The girl was looking at the door again.

  “We close at five, y’know?”

  “Sorry,” William said, looking over her shoulder at the wire glass in the door behind her. As if looking for his dog. “ . . . I just—my work. Five. You know.”

  The girl looked at him for maybe four seconds, then shrugged.

  “Thad was supposed to lock the door,” she said, finally. “Not your fault.”

  William nodded.

  “You seen him up here?” the girl asked.

  “Ted?”

  “Thad—don’t worry. Listen. Your pet, sir. When did it—”

  “Saturday.”.

  The girl turned to the door, zipping her keys out from her belt, towards the lock. William felt his lungs burning with air, made himself breathe, breathe.

  “What kind?” she asked, not looking at him.

  “Not sure,” William said, shrugging in case she could see his reflection somewhere. “I only got him last week.”

  The girl opened the door, turned up to William.

  “This is an adult dog?”

  “Yeah, yes.”

  “Did you check the prior owner?”

  William nodded. When the girl gave the door to him, she flipped it a bit so they weren’t quite touching it at the same time. Like it would conduct something between them. Something more than she wanted. William’s lips thinned behind his beard but he closed his eyes, stepped, stepped again, until it became a walk.

  “Color, then?”

  “Kind of . . . brownish. Black maybe. I’ll know him.”

  “Husky, Bull, Lab?”

  “I don’t—you want me to call my friend?”

  The girl looked back to William, stopped in the hall, as if to go back to the front desk, and then she looked ahead of them too. William could see it in her eyes: it was already past five, right?

  “Maybe you’ll see him,” she said, turning around again.

  She came up maybe to William’s sternum.

  At the first corner she palmed the radio she had on her belt, said into it that she was taking a gentlemen back into “Large Dogs.” William watched her thumb the radio back off, hook it to its plastic clip.

  “Thad?” he said.

  The girl nodded, shrugged like she was sorry.

  William shook his head no, though. “It’s good you do that,” he said.

  “We had something happen—it’s nothing. Couple of years ago. Listen. We’re going to go through the forty-pounders first, all right?”

  William nodded, took the next corner with her.

  Two years, then. It had already been two years.

  Every few steps there was a drain, and every forty feet, maybe, a twenty-foot hose coiled on the concrete wall.

  The first dog they got to exploded against his chain-link, his saliva going arm over arm down the metal.

  The girl held her hand out—this one?

  William shook his head no without even looking again, and they went on, run after run, until they came to an obviously pregnant dog. Mastiff, maybe, two generations back.

  “That her?” the girl asked.

  William hesitated a moment before shaking his head no.

  “She’s going to have puppies,” he said.

  The girl shook her head no, shrugged like an apology. One with calluses on it.

  William looked to her for an explanation.

  “We’ll—our doctor . . . ” She was searching for words, falling back on what sounded like a pamphlet: “Any stray we release, we fix, right?”

  William nodded, looked to the bitch again. Got it: “So I can’t have her?”

  “Not today,” the girl said, looking at the dog too, then away, as if she had to. “After the procedure, though . . . ”

  “I should find Lobo first,” William said, remembering.

  The girl zipped her keys out, a nervous thing, and they moved on. Lobo was four runs down, a large Rottweiler with scarred eyebrows.

  William smiled, wrapped his fingers around the chain link, and dropped to his knees.

  The dog crashed into the fence then fell back onto his hind legs. They collapsed under him. Bad hips.

  “Nothing to do about that, is there?” he said.

  “Acetaminophen for the pain,” the girl said. “You’re sure that’s him, though?”

  Because of the snarling, the snapping.

  William shrugged, squinched one side of his face up.

  “I didn’t—my friend. I shouldn’t even tell you this. He doesn’t know I have him, Lobo.”

  “You stole him?”

  William closed his eyes, as if controlling his voice.

  “He kept him chained to a telephone pole all day.” He shrugged. “Not even shade, y’know? The kids after school, I’d see them . . . Doesn’t matter.”

  The girl was watching the dog now. Again.

  “So Lobo’s not his name?”

  “It’s his new name.”

  The girl didn’t smile, didn’t nod, just looked to the dog, on one side of the wire door, William on his knees on the other.

  “I—I . . .” she started, then pulled the radio back to her mouth, thumbed it open, but finally didn’t say anything.

  “What already?” Thad snapped back, in the middle of what sounded like a bad scene with a large cat.

  Instead of reporting, the girl smiled over her hand. At William.

  William smiled back.

  “Nothing,” she said, lowering the radio back to her belt. “This isn’t procedure, you know that, right?” she said.

  William shrugged. “Don’t want to get you in trouble,” he said, reaching back, touching his wallet.

  The girl shook her head no.

  “It has to cost something,” William said.

  “Twenty-five,” the girl said, taking down the rainbow leash from its hook by 24B, Lobo’s run. “If there was going to be any paperwork, I mean,” she added. “Twenty-five for shots and neuter.”

  William nodded, watching her.

  “If there was going to be paperwork,” he repeated.

  She nodded with him, watching Lobo.

  “Not like I’m on the clock anymore, really,” she said, shrugging, passing the leash over. “Right?”

  William worked the clasp on the leash, the skin on the side of his index finger alive where it had brushed her hand.

  Behind the chain-link, Lobo was growling now, just a steady rumble.

  “Thanks,” William said.

  The girl smiled. “For what? I’m not even here, right?”

  William didn’t let himself smile, then stood in the door of the run with her when she opened it. Like, if Lobo had anything bad, any violence he’d been saving up for the last thirty-six hours, William was going to be the one to take it here.

  He was an old dog with bad hips, though. Used to being the biggest, sure, his head a cinderblock he could clear a room with. But William had been doing this for years, from Florida to Texas. All along I-10.

  When the dog slung his head around, William popped his knee to the side, rattling its teeth, then, covering it with his flannel body, he popped the dog once with the heel of his hand, hard, at the base of his spine. Just enough for the back legs to give. Then it was just a matter of leaning down onto the thick neck, working the rainbow leash around, clasping it to itself.

  The dog’s—Lobo’s—eyes shot red almost immediately with the pressure, the lack of air, and William kept his hand close to the clasp, so he had to walk hunched over.

  The girl was on the other side of the hall now, a can of something defensive in her hand.

  William smiled.

  “Not his fault,” he said, urging the dog along.

  “He won’t—he won’t get out again . . . ?”

  “The fence—” William said, making more of the struggle than there was, “fixed, yeah . . . don’t worry,” and then left the girl there like that, never even had to use the Pinzer name, or Pinker, or whatever t
he hell it had been.

  ~

  Two dogs later—a Shepherd-mix and a Golden Retriever, each from the classifieds, families he’d had to make earnest, shuffling promises to—William pulled into a gas station, checked all his doors, and asked the clerk for the bathroom key.

  “Have to buy something,” the clerk said, shrugging that it wasn’t his rule, but hey.

  William looked down the candy aisle behind him, came back to the clerk.

  “I will,” he said.

  “First,” the clerk added.

  He was five-eight, maybe. A smoker.

  William stared at him, stared at him, then lifted an air freshener off the revolving display by the register. Ninety-nine cents. He laid down a dollar, counted out one nickel and two pennies.

  “Bag?” the clerk asked.

  William shook his head no.

  The air freshener was an ice cream cone, pink. It smelled like bubble gum. William tucked it into the chest pocket of his flannel jacket and took the key the clerk held across the counter. It was chained to the rusted steel rim of a go-cart, maybe. Or a kid’s old three-wheeler. Nine inches across, four-hole, maybe eight pounds.

  William held it easy, nodded to the clerk, and chanced a look out to his truck. It was parked against the shattered payphone.

  No plates visible, just a side shot, a profile. Hardly even a real color.

  William stepped away from the security camera, rounded the corner of the building for the bathroom. When the door wouldn’t lock behind him, he set the key with its ATV rim down on the concrete, as a doorstop. And then he unrolled his leather case, let the water run until it was hot, and started applying the razor to his face, to his beard.

  Because the door wasn’t shut all the way, the mirror didn’t steam up. William took note of this. Mirrors were always a problem. Scratched in this one were years of names and profanity and lopsided shapes—stars, crosses, lines that were going to be something complicated but got interrupted when the door had opened.