Cursed Lane Kareska

CURSED

LANE KARESKA

Pike sat at a back table in the barroom. He crossed one dusty jean leg over another, his boot hung out fat. He touched his glass and watched the whiskey knock around in the bottom. He took it up, drained it, let the warm rush settle in him and ride out to the tips of all his bones.

He set the glass back on the table and lef it there.

Te revelers in the room had grouped at a kick-stage. Tey watched a young man sing country songs. Pike didn’t recognize any of the songs. Te kid wore tight pants and a tight shirt over no frame at all. Te girls laughed and shouted along as he sang to them. Big men played pool at the tables.

It was close to midnight. A waitress glided by with a tray of shots in little plastic cups. Pike signaled her with a nod.

“Want one, honey?” she asked, eyes hooded in chalky blue make-up.

“No,” he said. “Just the check, please.”

She nodded. “Be right back then.”

A girl he’d never seen before sat down at his table.

“Aw, don’t go,” the girl said to him.

He smiled at her, “Have to. It’s late.”

“It ain’t but twelve,” she wagged her face at him. She was pretty and blonde and she had a white smile.

“You ain’t but twelve,” he told her.

Tis made her chuckle. “Twelve times two,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“James.”

“James what?”

“James Pike.”

“Well, ain’t you gonna ask me mine?”

“Nope,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I won’t have time to know it.” He pulled out his wallet and separated the bills.

“Yes you will, James. Buy me a drink.”

“I’m sure there’s plenty here willing to help you with that.”

“Yeah, but I want one from you. Just one.”

Te waitress brought the check and placed it on the table.

Pike placed a ten dollar bill against the check and the girl said, “Just one.”

When he asked her what she wanted, she said a “Prairie Fire” and he’d never heard of it but she said that didn’t matter, he wasn’t gonna be drinking it.

He nodded at the waitress and he ordered it for her.

“Well, what are you gonna cheers me with?” the girl asked.

Pike ordered a Lone Star Beer, just one, and the waitress said okay and lef.

“Now you have time to ask me my name,” she said.

“Okay, tell me.”

“Luna Anne.”

“Luna Anne?” he asked.

“Tat’s what I said.”

“All right then, Luna Anne.”

“Where you from James Pike?”

“Harver, Texas.”

“My aunt lives there,” she said.

“No she don’t.”

“Yes she does. Aunt Jean Blayloch. She’s a hair dresser, you know the Gazebo Salon?”

“No, I don’t know that one,” he said.

“Well, that’s where she works. Maybe, I haven’t been down there in years.”

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Right up the road. Lived here all my life,” she said.

“You like it?” he asked.

“What’s not to like? We got one bar and no jobs.”

Te waitress brought the drinks and set them down on the table. She looked at Luna Anne and said, “Luna Anne behave.”

“Aw, I am behavin’.”

When the waitress lef, Pike took up the beer and set his elbow on the table and tilted the bottle at Luna Anne. She smiled and raised her glass and chimed it against his bottle.

“Cheers to you, James,” she said.

“Cheers to you, Luna Anne.”

Pike had rented a second foor room in the motel across the street. Tey fell into the door, kissing hard against each other’s mouths.

He unlocked the door and they entered and he fipped on the lights. Tere was the one bed and the television and nothing else.

“Where’s your stuf?” she asked.

“What stuf?”

She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him, pushing her thin cold tongue past his teeth.

He touched her hips and his fngers shook.

“Are you nervous?”

He did not answer but he was indeed. Tis was his frst woman in six years, and he had only just been released from prison a week ago.

She smiled and lifed her shirt over her head. She tossed it down and came back into him.

He entered her on the foor. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed the act. Tey sawed together and beneath him she was suddenly the smallest thing he’d ever touched. She was so like a child.

When it was over they slept beneath the bed sheets. She curled warm against him. Her alcohol-vanilla scent thrilled him. He all but forgot prison. In there he hadn’t even wanted for sex, had shut that part of himself of—simple as a light switch. But now, and here, it all came back.

He woke to whispers. His eyes opened and the girl, still naked, stood in the slatted darkness by the doorway. Te door opened to the full length of the chain and a bar of moonlight shone there. A chilly current of street air pushed into the room. She whispered to the man outside the door in hurried, panicked tones.

She said the words please and just leave.

Te man outside spoke back louder and furious: “You little bitch, little bitch…”

Pike threw the sheet from his body and leapt at the door.

It slammed open, snapping the chain and throwing the girl to the

foor.

Te young cowboy stood there in hat, jacket and boots. He flled the doorway and Pike tried to hurl the door shut at him but the cowboy pushed it in and entered. He swung a knife and cut Pike across the chest.

Naked, Pike fell backward and the girl wept against the wall.

“Lionel, don’t,” she sobbed.

“Get back. Sit on the bed.” He pointed the knife at her, then at Pike. “Listen to me mister, unless you want to lose that dick tonight.”

Pike looked at the girl, her body so small and young, curled against the wall.

Pike got his bare feet under him and looked up at the man, his wide hat and thin face—china blue eyes. Pike rushed him, speared him out into the walkway. Te man slammed into the railing, his back spooned out over the parking lot, his hat spun away.

Pike held him there and buried his shoulder deep into the man’s belly. Te railing leaned out. It felt as if it were about to break. He took hold of one of the man’s boot heels and stood, lifing him over and the cowboy fipped backward. He fell and landed on the pavement below with a concussive clap Pike had never heard before. It sounded like he’d just thrown a bag of packed ice over the rail.

Pike turned back into the room and shut the door behind him. Te girl sobbed and hid her face in her arms.

He pulled on his jeans and pulled on his boots.

“Get dressed,” he told her as he moved to the nightstand.

She cried and shook.

“Get dressed,” he said.

He took up the lamp and ripped the cord from its base and dropped the lamp onto the bed. He yanked the cord from the wall and balled it in his fst. He stepped out the door.

Already, Lionel ran up the stairs toward him. Blood ran down his chin and his jaw was skewed terribly.

Pike met him and punched him in the stomach. Lionel doubled over on top of him. Pike took hold of Lionel’s greasy head and looped the cord round his neck. He twisted the cord and held it at both ends. Like guiding a calf, he steered the man into the room head frst and drove him back toward the bathroom. He threw him up against the mirror, took his head, held it like a basketball and forced it down hard against the sink bowl. Lionel dropped limp and fell to the foor. Te sink came undone entirely and fell down beside him.

Pike told her, “Get dressed.”

Pike walked to the room door and shut it. He tried to lock it but the chain was gone. He came back to Lionel on the foor. He turned him over onto his side and checked his pulse at the neck, below the hinge of his purple, swelling jaw. Alive.

Pike’s chest was not cut deeply. He dabbed at it with the bed sheet and then put on his shirt and jacket.

He looked at her. His heart slammed behind his breastbone. “I’m going to call the police now,” he told her. “I think maybe you better stay here until they arrive.”

She just sobbed into the wall.

He dialed 911 from the room phone and he lef the receiver on the bed. He never spoke. He looked at Lionel on the foor, the destroyed sink, Luna Anne.

Ten he lef the room.

He went down the stairs and found his truck. He didn’t look at anything else. He got in the truck and turned the engine and drove from the parking lot.

Te sky became gray in the predawn.

He drove out and found the highway and took it west toward New Mexico.

He drove out the full tank and flled up again and drove on

He thought about the girl and the kid. Maybe Lionel was an old boyfriend of hers. Just some local dirtbag. He hoped she’d be all right. He thought she would be.

Tere were no other cars on the highway. No police cruisers behind him. None hidden in the of-roads scanning for speeders. He drove just over the speed limit and he fxed the cruise control there.

Tey’d probably be looking for his truck. Had the girl seen it? Could she have described it accurately? Probably not. And probably not the little, half-asleep motel clerk either.

He didn’t know what options he had beyond driving. None at all, he guessed.

Afer nightfall, he pulled of at another motel. Before he even parked a woman waved at him from the sidewalk.

He rolled down his window and looked at the woman. She wore a long t-shirt that bagged around her body. Her hair was thin and ratty and she smoked a cigarette. Her eyes rolled like she was on something.

He looked at her but did not speak.

“You got a fashlight?” she asked, brown teeth visible.

“What for?” he asked.

“My friend is asleep in the room and he locked me out.”

“What do you need a fashlight for?”

“I can see him on the bed, I wanna try and wake him up through the window.”

“Knock on the door,” Pike said.

“He’s deaf. I need a fashlight.”

“Get another key from the ofce.”

“I don’t want to do that,” she said.

“I don’t have a fashlight.”

“Yes you do.”

He rolled up his window. She walked back to the room door.

Damn it. She’d probably break into his truck at some point tonight.

He quit that motel and found a diferent one.

He rented a room and checked his wound in the mirror. It was shallow and would not leave a scar. He looked at himself, his chest, his tattoos. Prison had hardened his body.

He showered and slept.

He dreamt about his father. He dreamt about being young and the frst car he and his dad repaired together—a little VW.

Pike woke and stepped out to the balcony. He stood there in the night and held the railing and looked out the little strip malls and the small glitter of the city beyond that.

He stepped back inside and shut the door behind him. He washed his face and set to shaving but stopped himself. He quit the idea and decided to grow a beard. Better start changing your appearance.

He drove on in the morning.

He ate at a café and the woman poured him cofee in a ceramic mug.

She brought him biscuits and gravy and a fried steak. He asked if they could switch the egg with some fruit or something.

“Don’t like eggs?” she asked.

“No ma’am. Not since I was little.”

“Well, I know he’s got no fruit back there. I can bring you a little dish of cottage cheese.”

“Tat’ll work.”

“All right then.”

Folded sheets of newspaper were fanned on the countertop down from him. It didn’t seem to be anyone’s paper. He reached over and took it and began to read while he waited for his food. It was a business section and all the companies in the articles were companies he’d never heard of before. Couldn’t guess their industries from their names. He set down the paper and the waitress came back and set the plate down in front of him.

She poured more cofee and asked “Where you headed?”

He shrugged. “Nowhere special.”

“Sugar, you’re there.”

He smiled at her and stirred cream into the cofee.

He drove through the Indian reservations and crossed into Arizona. His heart boomed when he saw a police car but it passed him and that was that.

Days of driving. He spent the money he’d piled in a secret bank account before he’d been incarcerated. Somewhere along the way he decided he would need to leave the country. Mexico or Canada. Hell, even Europe. He could buy a plane ticket, be gone. Never think about any of it again. If only it was that simple. If they ever caught up with him they’d toss his ass back in for leaving the state. Te best thing in his life, he knew, was also the worst thing. He thought hard about it and decided that it was likely that no one was actively looking for him. Tere was a warrant surely, but perhaps they’d not pursue. No living family to speak of. No visible future. Pike imagined if he stayed still long enough he’d simply dissolve into the world, like ice in a glass of water. Become something simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. Alive and dead, here and not. An in-between kind of living. Would that be curse or blessing?

He drove up toward Seattle. Stopped in a town, bought fresh clothes, visited a bookstore, looked at maps. He could make it into Canada. He could get rid of this truck. Cash out. Walk away.

Early in the evening, he returned to his motel. He parked the truck and carried his shopping bag full of two travel books and one folding map toward the room. He followed the walkway and saw no one. He stopped at room 3, his. He unlocked the door and opened it and stepped inside. He shut the door and set the plastic shopping bag on the bed. He fipped the key onto the bed and a man he’d never seen before stepped out of the bathroom wielding a silver pistol.

Te man was old and wide. He wore no facial expression at all. Just open blue eyes. He wore a white paper jumpsuit like the kind golf caddies wore. He wore blue latex gloves and clean white tennis shoes and a dark ski cap. He held the silenced pistol at his waist. Te skin of his face was rocky and pale. He was in his sixties.

Pike stopped dead and he knew this moment was likely his last.

Te man in white nodded at Pike. He said, “Sit on the bed.” His voice was clear and grim, nearly sad.

Pike could make a run for the door, haul it open and sprint. But at this distance, he thought, he would be easily put down. Pike sat on the bed.

“Place your hands on your knees,” the man in white said.

Pike did so. He sat as straight-backed as a courtroom witness.

Te man in white dragged the little desk chair and sat it six feet away,

turned it to face Pike. Te man in white sat down and rested the pistol on his knee.

“James Augustus Pike?” the man in white asked.

“Tat ain’t me,” Pike said.

Te man in white gave a sof, grandfatherly smile—nearly congratulating him with his eyes. “I know it is. I know all about you.”

Pike said not a word. His heart hammered and each crashing beat drenched his body in a wave of cold panic. He swallowed and contained it, held it back, kept his breath steady.

“You got in a fght six days ago,” the man in white said, “with my son, Lionel Brewster.”

Te cowboy in the motel. Luna Anne.

“You pierced his brain with a shard of his own skull,” the man in white said. “He’s in a coma now. Tat was my son. He’ll be dead any day.”

Pike inhaled slowly. He drew in the air and let it fll his lungs; let it occupy that space like a cinder block in his chest.

“He was gonna hurt that girl,” Pike said.

“Tat girl? What do you know? Who are you?” the man in white said slowly.

“Nobody,” Pike said honestly.

“Nobody. Nobody from nowhere. Is that what you say?” Te man in white leaned forward. “You’re not James Pike from Harver, Texas? Son of Commander Howard Pike and Myra Jane Pike? James Pike dishonorably discharged from the Marines, convicted of involuntary manslaughter? You’re not wanted for parole violation? You’re not a fugitive? A drifer, a killer?”

“What do you want?” Pike asked.

“My son is neither alive nor dead. What do you think I want?”

“I am sorry. I truly am. I didn’t want to hurt him or anybody.”

“But you did,” the man in white said. “And I found you.”

Yes. He did fnd him. In not a great length of time either.

Te man in white smiled as if he’d seen something ficker in Pike’s face. Some glimmer of recognition that Pike had been bested. “I been a lawman my entire career,” the man in white said. “I have killed two men in my lifetime, righteous kills each. Tey were low men, like you. Cowards. I know how to fnd people. I know how to talk to little pieces of trash like Luna Anne—get ‘em to tell me all they know about James Pike and his red Ford truck with a Texas plate. Te point is: I’m smarter than you. I’m a better man than you. I have all the right in the world to take your life.

Pike inhaled again and began slowly, “Mister, I don’t know you or

your son. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just want to leave. You ain’t ever gonna have to see me again. It’ll be just like I’m dead.”

Te man’s eyes bloomed with pleasure. “Yes, that’s true.”

Pike saw no outs. Just two men in a room, one armed, one not.

“Te last few days,” the man in white said, “I been talking about Lionel like he’s already dead himself. Folks have been telling me not to. People say stay positive. Well, look: I know Lionel wasn’t perfect. He had his problems, like any man. But he was my son. Can you understand that, Pike? Do you know what I feel now when I look at you?”

“No,” Pike said. “No, I don’t.”

Te man scratched his face and nodded. Afer a long moment the man in white asked, “Do you regret it? Do you regret what you did to him?”

“I regret it.”

“I believe you. I do, Mr. Pike. I don’t think you meant to hurt him. I don’t think you were even looking for trouble that night. But, here it is, trouble found you, didn’t it? It always does, right? I have sympathy. I do. I know about men like you. I know that cursed men walk this earth. Violence seeks you out. Evil uses you to do its work. Men like you are not evil, but you are evil’s body. Evil uses men like you. You’re a cursed man. It ain’t your fault. I want you to be comforted by that. You are not stronger than what works through you.”

Pike stared straight ahead at the man with the pistol.

Te man reached into the pocket of his coveralls and withdrew a pair of pruning shears. Tey were small and dark, no bigger than a pair of heavy scissors.

“I’m going to let you buy your way out of this,” the man said.

Pike looked at the shears.

Te man in white tossed them onto the bed beside Pike.

“All it will cost you are your fngers.”

Pike put his eyes on the man’s and fxed them there.

“I’ll help you with the fnal ones. But you must start on your own. Your hands will commit no evil again,” the man said. “Tis will ensure that. We’ll do this together. We’ll collaborate.”

Pike looked at the shears, then back at the man. He kept silent a long moment then said, “I could rush you.”

Te man in white raised his chin a bit, judging Pike.

“Maybe even get to you before you cut me down,” Pike said.

“Tat what you wanna do?” the man asked. “You want to risk it? Or you want to do the right thing? Stop the curse with me. Let’s commit an act

of good together.”

Pike eyed the distance. Imagined plowing straight into the old man, turning the pistol on him. Could he do it? How many rounds would the man in white put into him before he got there?

Pike took up the shears.

Te man nodded. “Do the good thing.”

Pike held the shears in his right hand. Both hands trembled. He opened the mouth of the shears and slowly ft the pinky of his lef hand between the blades. Te metal felt cold and dull against his skin. Pike held the shears at the bone just above the knuckle. Was this real? Was he really being made to do this?

He looked into the man’s china blue eyes and squeezed the arms of the shears with all his strength. He squeezed and waited for the snap.

In the fallen night, the motel held silent. Almost no lights shone from any of the rooms. A few run-out cars sat parked outside by Pike’s truck. Te distant tear of the highway was the only sound. Streetlights winked their sequences in silence.

Te door of room 3 kicked open. Reeling, Pike stumbled out. He fell to one knee on the pavement. He hugged his chest with his lef arm, squeezing the hand in his armpit. His shirt was all stained with blood. A thin rill of gun smoke issued from the bullet hole in his shoulder.

Pike spat and struggled to his feet. He staggered to his truck and unlocked it with his right hand. He eased himself into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. Cold blood slid all down his back and flled the creases of the seat. His shoulder felt to be exploding in white-hot pain. Bastard. Pike cranked it into reverse and gassed it. He backed over the curb. Te truck bounced and trundled then stopped. He pulled it into drive and hauled of toward the highway.

His truck swerved all across the breadth of the road.

He held up his mangled hand to examine the stumps. Tree fngers gone.

Te pain in the shoulder spread to his chest and back in thick, ropy tendrils. He had no idea where he was driving.

Perhaps he’d get himself to a hospital. Perhaps he’d crash on the way. Perhaps he’d simply keep driving as long as he kept conscious.

You’re a cursed man. You’re a cursed man.

Curses?

His father had told him of a curse once.

Little Bastard. Te car James Dean drove. Te car in which James Dean died. An old model Porsche Spyder. A little silver piece of work—the young star tore across the breast of the California desert and met his end.

Little Bastard was sold and divided up several times. Everywhere a piece of the car went disaster and death fell also. Parts were installed in race cars that exploded or failed and killed their drivers and bystanders as well.

Te remains were crated and sent away by truck. And for reasons unknown, that truck swerved of the road and that driver and several other motorists were killed.

Te car was put on display outside a high school. It fell and killed bystanding students.

A vandal’s artery was fatally opened by the car’s jagged edges when he tried to steal the blood-stained steering wheel.

And somewhere along the way, Little Bastard just vanished. Te cursed car just disappeared. It is everywhere and nowhere. Its scraps and shrapnel have been sold of and transplanted from car to car, its organs divided and redivided so that who is to say what car could not bear some of the curse?

But also, it is whole and alive and driving through the desert beneath the stars and their circuit; claiming lives all the time. A mindless force, unreasonable as anything. What is the reason. What is the purpose.

Pike foored the gas pedal and slid down the road. Stars and streetlights merged into neon lines, endless spears of light, as if he was plunging through the cosmos. As if he’d lef his body already.

Pike leaned over the bloody steering wheel as if in prayer.