Promise - Short Stories From Promise Goodday

Promise

  Short Stories

  From

  Promise Goodday

  by

  Charles W. Harvey

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Promise

  Short Stories

  Copyright ? 2012 by Charles W. Harvey

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  Author's Website www.charlesharveyauthor.com

  Table of Contents

  Promise

  End of the Line

  Goose Steps

  About The Author

  Letter Excerpt

  Other Titles

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  Promise Short Stories

  ****

  End of the Line

  Pete had driven for miles in the same circle. His eyes burned like fire. He hadn't slept. The cops were after him. He was like a rat in a maze. He needed to steal a car. He needed to eat. He needed to shit. But first he needed to ditch this piece of shit car. Stealing license plates was only going to take him so far. The radio kept spitting out the make and model and color of his car. 1976 Lincoln Continental Dark blue. License Plate number FGH 775. Right car wrong plates. It was an old Lincoln-a hand me down from his family's Mortuary business which his Brother was running. It's blue-black shell blended into the night. However, the morning sun was going to rise soon. A rat needed a place to lay low in daylight hours. Pete avoided lighted avenues and boulevards and drove down dark rutted roads. He wasn't sure where he was going. Where could a hunted man go, he wondered? He saw scenes from the TV show Wild Kingdom and Pete imagined himself as an ape running with the hot gaping jaws of lions right behind him. He laughed at the thought of the ape's blue and red ass. For a moment he had the foolish notion to paint his ass blue and run down the street naked. A helicopter buzzed over Pete's car. Sweat dotted his forehead. He was a hunted man and delirious with fear. He peeped through his windshield like a man peering through a dirty pool of water. The helicopter buzzed away. Pete sighed. He pushed a button and the radio lit up. The news announced that the Leaky Eye had been identified as a forty-four year old Metro bus driver named Pete Chesterfield suspected in dozens of attacks on women. Button after button spat his name or something about his crime. He had attacked a little girl on his bus. He killed a young cheerleader in his home. A shop owner near the Settegast Rail Yard saw him kissing a girl on the bus. "That one-eyed lying son of a bitch," Pete spat. He may be armed and is considered dangerous. Armed with what Pete wondered--a tire iron in the trunk?

  A peculiar chill ran down his spine as he heard his name called over and over. "I'm famous," he said to himself before red flashing lights ahead made him veer right down a dark street. He stopped and looked at the radio as it chattered about him, cut away to a song, and in a sultry voice extolled the pleasures of drinking Malt Liquor. He hit another button and the announcer spoke Spanish. Through the cacophony of rolled vowels and rapid fire speaking, his name "Pete Chesterfield" oozed over the airwaves as if the announcer was singing it. Pete started his car as mournful Spanish guitars strummed. Up ahead a little whitish dog strayed into the street. Pete hated dogs. Even being a hunted man didn't mute his rage of seeing a stray dog and wanting to kill it. Pete gunned the motor of his car. There was a terrible yelping and then a scream. Pete stopped and got out. He walked back and looked at the tangle of white fur and blood lying in the street. It reminded him of a body his Uncle had wrenched from a wrecked car. The body soot colored, had only part of a nose on what was left of its face and its brains seeped through a head of nappy hair.

  "Look at it, boy. Death is an ugly son of a bitch," his Uncle had hollered.

  "Look at death," Pete said looking down at the mess of animal. He didn't notice her at first but a soft whimper caught his ear. He looked up and a white woman with short blond hair was crying on the sidewalk. An empty leash hung by her side. The chain twinkled under the moonlight. Her yellow housecoat bunched around her neck. Her knees stuck out like small yellowish potatoes. Pete's eye itched and he stepped toward the woman working his mouth as if he was an actor in a silent movie. She stared at Pete. Her eyes sparkled with fear and rage. They looked like blue sapphires. She stood perfectly still as if she had been turned to a statue. Far off a siren wailed. The heat from the woman's body warmed Pete's belly. The siren grew louder.

  "You lucky bitch," Pete said as he turned and trotted to his car. "You know I'm famous don't you?" Pete shouted back at her as he slammed his door.

  Pete found himself easing past a patch of weeds near the Bus Barn. He killed his headlights. From the distance he spied some of his fellow bus Drivers standing under bright fluorescent lights. In their white shirts and black pants, they resembled large moths. Empty buses stood like large patient elephants waiting to be told what to do. One bus was parked away from the others. It stood alone as if being punished. Plastic yellow tape draped across the bus' front door as if it had won a prize ribbon. Pete knew it was police tape. He saw police cars parked next to the big opened door of the depot. He knew they had scoured the bus for evidence. He drove on past. All of the roads he took were dark and unfamiliar. His car's lights dimmed as he drove. The motor in the old Lincoln was giving out. In a moment, the motor sputtered and the car stopped. He turned the key. The car lurched a couple of feet before it finally died. Pete looked at the dash. The temperature needle rose high above the H mark.

  "End of the road, nigger," Pete said to himself. He got out of the car and found himself walking in a ditch. Steel girders rose in the distance and appeared to sway. Pete wondered if he was near the docks. If he was, he might slip onto a boat that was sailing to Jamaica or better yet, Africa. He had never been to Africa, but in his mind saw a huge mass of black skin glistening under the sun. Black faces melding and becoming as one huge face of "negroes" in the city driving cars or goats wearing suits or loincloths. In his Africa, one couldn't tell the women from the men, because all heads were adorned with short "nappy" hair. Who could pick him out amongst this ebony throng?

  He quieted his breathing and listened for water lapping and ship horns. Silence interrupted by frogs croaking greeted him. He crouched low in the ditch and felt as if he was in a grave. He crawled on all fours from his car toward the steel girders. The gooey muck sucked and held his hands and knees and he had to yank them up each time he moved. His eyes glazed and he could barely see. For some odd reason, the biblical story of Christ healing a blind man by making a mud paste and rubbing it in his eyes wandered into Pete's thoughts. He wondered if the cool sticky mud could fix his eyes. And would that balm heal his heart? Pete grabbed fistfuls of mud and smacked his eyes. He sat still and the cool mud massaged his eyes as if it was drawing out the disease that afflicted them. Pete crawled and felt around until he found a puddle. He bent low and washed his eyes. The stinging and burning was gone. He blinked three times at the moon.

  He leaned back into the soft earth and wondered what to do. The road rose high above like the top of a wall. Pete sat for a long time. The air around was fetid and moist and reminded him of something unpleasant. He saw her clearly. He was a little drunk and all he had wanted to do was kiss her. But Ashley backed away and he had to leap after her again. He managed to put his mouth around one of her nipples, before she slammed her knee into his thigh. A little more to the left and she would have crushed his balls. He twisted and managed to pin her to the bed with his hands around her throat. He heard a tapping at the front door and at the same time smelled a foul odor. He looked down and stood up. Ashley slid to the floor with her panties full of shit.

  Images of all the women he h
ad hurt, crammed next to Ashley's body and forced him to look at them with his new eyes. He tried to blink them away, but they came one after another--nude, twisted faces, and a white dress with purple stains.

  "You whores get away from me," He screamed. An echo answered back the plaintive "me" and all was quiet again. The women left him. He sat in the ditch with his eyes closed. When he opened them, the sky was purple as if dawn was about to break. Pete wondered if there was a switch he could hit to turn off the daylight and allow him to lie cocooned in the ditch forever. A siren wailed in the distance. He peeped at the road to see if a police car might be coming and caught sight of the top of an abandoned Ferris wheel across the way. The wheel held a few seats while others lay at a heap near its base. It occurred to him that he had never ridden a Ferris wheel. No one had ever taken him to a circus or a carnival and he had never taken Shadrach. As he was thinking, car doors slammed. In the distance, he saw a swarm of policemen around his vehicle. Their lights shined through and around his car. It glowed like the carcass of a beast. Soon those lights would be looking for him, he thought. Pete scooped out a large hole with his hands and buried his white shirt. He spied a culvert pipe that ran under the road from the ditch to the carnival graveyard on the other side. Pete crept through the pipe. When he climbed out of the hole, he was on the grounds of the abandoned park. The Ferris wheel loomed over him. Parts of it had fallen away and pieces of iron littered the ground like bones. It was like someone had taken a bite out of the moon and spat it out.

  He cocked his head and heard hounds baying. He reached up and caught hold of an iron bar. He pulled himself up, and his feet found their way from girder to girder. Pete settled in the highest seat he thought beyond the reach of searchlights. From his perch he could see the lights from the police cars flashing red and blue. A pack of dogs strained at a chain as they sniffed around his car. He saw them sniffing the front bumper and a man jerking them away. Someone bent toward the car with a flashlight. Pete guessed the dogs had found the blood of the mongrel he had run over. A helicopter hovered over the policemen's heads. Its searchlight blazed a washtub-sized light toward the ditch. Soon the men were following the dog's noses. Pete knew that in a matter of time the dogs would be clawing at his shirt. He stood and tested the beams that held the gondola where he sat. A stout one would need too much of the belt. One too small and weak might snap and send him tumbling onto the sharp rusty spikes below. He looked up and saw what looked like the end of an alligator's tail. He reached up and grabbed the pipe. It was ridged with tiny spikes. The end of it was bolted to a larger beam with four screws the size of a big toe. Pete took off his belt. In the distance he saw the cops waving something that looked like a white fag. They had found his shirt. The dogs had a fresh scent. The helicopter buzzed louder. The light's beam danced over the abandoned rollercoaster tracks turning them into gold and brass bars. He knew it was only a matter of minutes before the light found him stuck in the wheel like an insect. He took off his belt. Attached to the belt was the silver hole-punch he used for validating transfer tickets. He shoved it in his pocket. The belt was new and the scent of fresh leather hit his nostrils. He knew it would hold tight. Pete sniffed it for a second before he looped the buckle end around his neck and drew it tight. He tied the other end around the beam. Because the belt was new he struggled with making a knot. When it was secured, he looked down at his feet. He hadn't paid any attention to the platform where he stood. However, now he saw how wide it was. He jumped and leaped forward, but could not get his heels past the edge. He felt the heat of the light sweep across his face. Again he jumped and bucked. He raised one foot off the platform and jumped in an attempt to choke himself. He tried raising both, but could not stay suspended. His feet thundered back onto the metal platform. Suddenly his face burned hot. The light was unyielding and did not move as he turned his face left and right. They had found him. Hoots and shouts echoed from the helicopter's crackling radio. He looked down. Red and blue lights swept over the amusement park. A voice called from the helicopter for him to raise his hands. Pete jumped again for the edge of the grate. The helicopter hovered close. The wind whipped his face and his trousers. Soon there were voices shouting and dogs baying from the bottom of the Ferris wheel. Flashlights below flickered like candles.

  "Sir, put your hands in the air!" The voice was nasally and sharp from the Helicopter. Sweat drenched his face. It burned his eyes. He absently reached in his pocket as if it was a summer day and he needed a tissue to wipe his brow. He caressed the metal punch. He pulled it out and aimed it like a gun. The voice shouted into a radio and the helicopter jumped away. In the dim light Pete saw the officers below scurrying behind whatever they could use for cover. Voices shouted through bullhorns for him to drop his weapon. He aimed the punch toward the voices. He heard a loud ping next to his ear. Then a blast of fire tore into his throat. Pete gasped for air. More fire stung his body. He felt himself lurch forward. He stopped midway on buckled knees. The punch fell out of his hand. For a moment he thought it was music as it hit the metal bars below on its way to the ground. By the time the cops had shimmied up the bars and catwalks and shined their lights on him, his neck was stretched like a chicken's. A grayish thick matter from his bulging eyes ran down his face and his pants had fallen around his knees. He was dead

  Goose Steps