Mad Stacks: Story Collection Box Set Read online

  "Joo hear that?" she whispered. J.D. heard only crickets and the slight squeaking of leaf springs.

  "Hear what?"

  "A scratching, like. On metal."

  J.D. looked up. He always parked away from the trees out on these country roads. Damned branches would claw the hell out of a custom paint job. He saw nothing but the gangly shadows of the far underbrush.

  "I don't hear nothing, babe. Now, where were we?"

  "There it went again. Sounds like it's coming from the trunk."

  "Bullshit."

  "Sounds like a squirrel running around in there."

  J.D. strained his ears. He heard the faint rattle of tools. Then, fingernails on metal.

  He sat up suddenly.

  "What the hell, J.D.?"

  "Nothing. Better get you back to town, is all."

  Melanie whimpered. She was as good at whimpering as she was at pouting.

  "But J.D., I thought—"

  "Not tonight, I got . . . work to do."

  She whined all the way back into town, but J.D. didn't hear her. All he could hear were the low moans coming from the trunk and the sound of fists banging like rubber mallets off the trunk lid.

  After J.D. dropped off Melanie, he pulled out behind Floyd's garage and looked around the auto graveyard. Here was where Detroit's mistakes came to die. Pontiacs draped over Plymouths while Chryslers sagged on cinder blocks. A school bus slept in its bed of briars. A couple of Studebakers decayed beside the high wooden fence, and a dozen junk jeeps were lined in rows like dead soldiers awaiting body bags. The few unbroken headlights were like watching eyes, but they would be the only witnesses.

  Back here, Miss American Mincemeat Pie could rust in peace.

  He stepped out among the bones of cars, gang-raped engines, and jagged chassis. The moon was glaring down, all of last night's clouds now long-hauled to the east. J.D. gripped the trunk key between his sweaty fingers.

  "Open it, J.D.," said the voice. It was a young, hollow voice, with the kind of drawn-out accent a country girl might have. The long syllables reverberated inside the tin can of the trunk space.

  J.D. looked around the junkyard.

  "Stick it in, muscleboy," the voice taunted. "You know you want to."

  He unlatched the trunk and it opened with a rush of foul air.

  She sat up and arched her back.

  "Cramped in here," she said. The moon shone fully on her, like a spotlight. The raw flesh of her face was tinged green, and her eyes were ringed with black. She reached up to smooth her hair and her arm hung like a broken clutch-spring.

  "You . . . y-you're dead." But that was dumb. He knew machines didn't die, they only got rebuilt.

  "Now, do I look dead?"

  J.D. didn't know what to say. It wasn't the kind of thing he could look up in the troubleshooting section of his owner's manual.

  "Still got a few miles left on me," she said, tugging at the strap of her dress that had slipped too low over her mottled chest. Her eyes were wide but as dull as Volkswagen hubcaps. "Besides, all I need is a little body work and I'll be good as new."

  "What's the big idea, screwing up my date like that?" J.D. angled his head so he could look at her out of the corners of his eyes.

  "Your cheating days are over, rough rider. You've only got room in your heart for one girl now."

  "Whatchoo talking about? And why did you dump over my toolbox?" J.D. couldn’t be sure, but it looked like radiator fluid was leaking from her eyes.

  "A lady's always in search of that one good tool. What say we get it on?"

  "No. I'm going to stuff you behind the seat of that Suburban over there, and you're going to stay until you're both a collector's item."

  "J.D., is that any way to treat a lady?"

  "Well, you ought to be glad I think enough of you to leave you in a Chevy. There's plenty of Datsuns out here."

  She shook her head, and tattered meat swung below her face. "I don't think so, muscleboy."

  Her finger flexed like a carb linkage as she beckoned him closer.

  J.D. couldn't help himself. He was as captivated as he'd been by his first Hot Rod magazine. She smelled of gasoline and grave dirt, hot grease and raw sex. She'd oozed out all over the spare tire. He'd never get his trunk clean.

  "I think we're ready for a midnight run." She slid her mangled tongue over her teeth.

  He leaned over the back bumper. He felt a cold limp hand slide behind his Mark Martin belt buckle. She put the mashed blackberries of her lips to his ear.

  "And from now on, I ride up front," she whispered, and her words came out with no breath.

  Three months, and J.D. was dragging.

  The summer heat was wearing on him, and he'd lost twenty of his hundred-and-forty pounds. But it was even worse for her. She had gone from pink to green to gray and still the meat clung stubbornly to her bones.

  He hid her during the day, in a self-storage garage he rented. Floyd had given him hell at first, asking him why he walked all the time these days, was he afraid of putting another dent in Cammie or what. But lately Floyd had quit the ribbing. This morning Floyd said J.D. looked like he'd been run all night by the hounds of hell.

  "Something like that," J.D. wanted to say, but he'd promised to keep the affair a secret.

  And that evening, as he'd done every night since he'd picked up his new passenger, he carried a five-gallon can of gas to the garage and filled up the Camaro.

  And when the sun slid behind the flat Midwestern horizon and midnight raised its oil-soaked rags, he backed the car out and pointed it toward the street.

  "Where to tonight, Cammie?" he asked, as if he had to ask.

  She grinned at him. She was always grinning, now that her face was mostly skull. "The usual, muscleboy."

  He drove out to that three-mile stretch of open black road and idled. Oblivion beckoned beyond the yellow cones of the headlights.

  "One-sixty-five tonight," she said.

  He gulped and nodded. One-sixty-five. He could do it. Probably.

  Not that he had any choice. He could damage her flesh, but couldn't break the timing chains of love.

  "Okay, Cammie," he said to her.

  As J.D. stomped the accelerator and jerked his foot off the clutch, he wondered if this would be the night of consummation. Would she let him release the steering wheel as he wound into fifth gear, making them truly one, all blood and twisted metal and spare parts?

  He glanced at her. There was no sign of requited love in the dim holes of her skull. She was as cold as a machine, unforgiving, more metal than bone, more petroleum than blood.

  She was going to ride shotgun forever, as the odometer racked up miles and miles of endless highway.

  If only he could please her. But he was afraid that he was nothing to her, just a vapor in the combustion chambers of her heart.

  He shifted into fourth.

  THE END

  Gateway Drug Table of Contents

  Master Table of Contents

  ###

  IN THE FAMILY

  By Scott Nicholson

  "How could you even think of selling it?" Gaines breathed on a brass rail and polished it with his jacket sleeve.

  Mother should be proud, Gaines thought. But her pride was in a new luxury sedan, twice-yearly trips to the Mediterranean, face-lifts. All fleeting, mortal things. If only she had more of the Wadell blood in her. Then she would find joy in the only things that truly last: a proper memorial, a professional embalming job, a final show of respect.

  "I put up with it long enough because of your father. And now that he's gone, there's no reason to hang around this—this mausoleum." Mother's hair was stiff from a forty-dollar frosting job at her hairdresser's. It didn't shift as she wrung her hands and rolled her eyes in another of her classic "spells."

  "We've invested so much in the Home," Gaines said. "But this isn't about money. This is about tradition."

  "Tradition, my foot. Your grandfather was a drunkard and a fool.
He started the business because this was the only one that couldn't possibly fail. And your father was just like him. Only he had the sense to marry somebody with a good head for business."

  "And business has never been better," Gaines said. "So why sell now?"

  "Why? Because I've given enough of my life to the Wadell Funeral Home. I've had it up to here—" she put a hand to her surgically-tucked and shiny chin,"—with death and dying. And there you go, wasting a quarter grand on remodeling."

  Gaines looked around the parlor. The brooding red pine paneling was gone, the walls now covered with clear-varnished oak. Strip spotlights hung in place of the fluorescent tubes that had once vomited their weak green light. Purple velvet drapes hung from the windows, in thick folds of the regal splendor that the guests of honor so richly deserved. On a raised platform at the rear of the room, soft light bathed the bier where the guests received their final tribute.

  The sinking sun pried its way through the front glass, suffusing the bleached woodwork of the dais with a red-golden light. No dust gathered on the plush cushioning he had added to the straight-backed pews. The room smelled of wax and rosewater, incense and carnations. Not the slightest aroma of decaying flesh was allowed in the parlor area.

  This had been a place of peace. But lately it was a place for the same argument again and again.

  "Mother, please be reasonable," Gaines said. "I know Father left you the Home in his will, but he told both of us a hundred times that he wanted me to carry on the business. It’s the only thing he really felt passion for."

  "That’s the truth." She shook her head slowly, and in the soft light, she looked about half of her sixty-eight years. "I’m not doing this just for me. Though, Lord knows, I'm ready for a change. It's mostly for you."

  "Me?"

  "You think I want my only son to spend his life up to his elbows in the guts of corpses? Do you want to go home every night and take two long showers, but no matter how hard you scrub, the smell stays with you? It's in the food you eat, the air you breathe, it's in the water you drink, it's in your blood. And I want to save you from that."

  In your blood. That's what Mother didn't understand. The funeral parlor was more than a family business. It was a duty, a sacred trust. "You can't sell it," he said.

  "Oh, I can't? You just watch." Mother stamped her two-inch heel onto the parquet floor and bustled from the room.

  Gaines heard the side door slam as Mother left the parlor. Warmth crept up his face, a rush of emotion that no good interment man should allow to show. He couldn't lose his temper. Not with Stony Hampton's viewing a half-hour away.

  He could be angry at Mother, but not at Stony's expense. Stony was a much-beloved member of the community and a top-notch mechanic. Sure, he'd had a fondness for moonshine and the cigarettes that had eventually stifled his lungs, and maybe he'd slapped his kids around a little, but all that was forgiven now, at least until the man was in the ground. For a few days, from the hour of death to service to burial, even the lowest scoundrel was a saint.

  Gaines went through a curtained passage off one wing of the dais. The back room always calmed him. This, too, was a place of peace, but a peace of a different kind. This was where Gaines was alone with his art.

  The sweet aroma of formaldehyde embraced him as he opened a second door. Faint decay and medicinal smells clung like a second skin to the fixtures: a stainless steel table, sloped with a drain at one end; shelves of chemicals in thick glass jars; rows of silent metal gurneys, eager to offer a final ride; garbage bins gaping in anticipation of offal and excrescence.

  Here, Gaines practiced the craft of memory-polishing. Each guest had loved ones counting on Gaines' skill. The sewing shut of eyelids and lips with the thin, almost-invisible thread. The removal of uncooperative intestines, kidneys, and spleens. The draining of viscid blood, that fluid so vital in life but a sluggish, unsightly mess when settled in death. The infusing of embalming fluid, siphoned through thin hoses. Anything that suffered the sin of decay must be cut out and removed. Otherwise, it would be an affront to the solemn and still temple of flesh that the loved ones worshipped prior to burial.

  After the eviscerating came the makeup. Gaines prided himself on the makeup. Of the three generations of Wadells that had worked in the business, Gaines had been most praised for his delicate touch. Just a tinge of blush here, some foundation there, a bit of powder under the eyes to blend out that depressing black. The right shade of rouge on the lips, so a loved one might imagine the wan face breaking into a smile.

  Stony Hampton was handsome under his green sheet. The wrinkles caused by sixty-odd years of gravity and grimaces were now smoothed. The face, though stiff to the touch, looked relaxed. Stony might as well have been dreaming of a three-day drunk or a '57 Chevy.

  Gaines pulled the sheet off the corpse and rolled the casket to the corner of the room. He pulled back the pleated vinyl curtain of the service window, then nudged the edge of the coffin onto the lip of the window. The coffin weighed nearly eight hundred pounds, but the smooth wooden rollers made the work easy. Gaines only had to give a gentle push and Stony Hampton was on the bier, under the soft lights of the viewing parlor.

  Gaines checked himself in one of the mirrors that lined the wall. He adjusted his tie and joined Stony in the parlor. Stony was in the spotlight, the star of the show, buffed and polished and ready to receive tribute. The viewing was even more important than the actual funeral, because the loved ones would be examining the guest, and therefore Gaines’ craft, at close proximity.

  The first loved ones came in the parlor and signed the memorial book with a brass-plated pen. Gaines watched to make sure the last signer returned the pen to its holder, then went over to greet them, putting on his funeral face as he went.

  More loved ones came. Stony had a lot of friends, relatives, and drinking buddies. Gaines solemnly shook hands with each. As they began filing past the guest of honor, Gaines stood against the wall with his hands clasped loosely over the lowest button on his black suit. His eyebrows furrowed in the proper mixture of sorrow and reverence, his jaw clenched so that his smirk of satisfaction wouldn't blossom like the lilies and tulips that girded the dais.

  Their tears, their joy, their final respect, all their emotions were due to Gaines' handiwork. This guest, James Rothrock "Stony" Hampton, was fit for heaven. This was a man they were all proud to have known. This man was one of God's finest and most blessed creations. As the organ music fed through the speakers, not an eye remained dry.

  Afterward, Stony's wife came up and gripped Gaines' elbow. Her eyes were wet and bright from too much spiritual uplifting. "He looks mighty fine, Mr. Wadell. Mighty fine."

  Gaines bowed slightly, tilting his head the way his father had taught him. "Yes, ma'am. We hate to see him go, but our loss is the Lord's gain."

  "You're so right," she said, dabbing at her face with a crumpled tissue. "And it won't be long till we're together again, anyway."

  "That will be a joyful reunion, ma'am," Gaines said politely, "but don't you go and rush things."

  "Well, this old heart can't stand up to much more. About worn down from ticking." Her skin had a slight gray pallor and was stretched tight around the bony angles of her face.

  Gaines figured she would be dead within the year. Another guest, another memory to be polished for loved ones, another star born. What Father said was true: The repeat business may not be all that hot, but at least the customers never complained.

  He said goodbye to the last loved ones, then locked up and returned Stony to the back room. Gaines removed his jacket and tie and hung them beside a mirror. He looked at his reflection, into the eyes that were the same color as Mother's. His face had the same oval shape as hers. But the blood, the liquid that his heart pumped behind the face and throughout his body, was all Wadell.

  Heart. What was it that Alice Hampton had said? Worn down from ticking.

  Mother had heart problems. But her doctors wanted to install a pacemaker. That
would probably guarantee that she'd last another twenty years. Plenty of time to sell the funeral service and move away. Long enough to demolish everything that Gaines had trained toward since he was six years old.

  Gaines looked down and saw that his fists were clenched. He spread his fingers and willed them to stop trembling. Laura Mae Greene was waiting on a gurney in the walk-in refrigerator. She needed his skills. He would not disappoint her. Or her loved ones.

  He reached for his apron and mask, then slipped rubber gloves over his eager hands.

  "I'll be late tomorrow," Mother said. "I have to drive to Asheville for a checkup."

  "Do you want me to drive you?"

  "No. I know you have the Hampton funeral. I wouldn't want to take you away from your 'work.'"

  Gaines put down his fork.

  "What's the matter?" Mother said. She divided her filet mignon with delicate sawing motions.

  "Just thinking, that's all," Gaines said.

  "Let's not start." She sipped her wine. Sixty dollars a bottle. False pride.

  "Next year I was going to buy some acreage," he said. "Carve it into burial plots. Get into monument brokering as well. Make Wadell's a one-stop shopping center for all the aftercare needs."

  Mother slammed her knife onto the table. "Stop this nonsense. You're going to go out and find an honorable profession. Why, with your talents, I wouldn't even complain if you went to art school."

  "I'm not going to art school."

  "Why are you breaking your poor mother's heart?"

  "Are you going to sell the house, too?"

  The big fine house stood near the parlor. Grandpa had saved a fortune by building the parlor on property he already owned. Of course she would sell the house. So what if three generations of Wadells had walked these halls and slept in these rooms and dreamed in these beds?

  "It's for your own good, don't you see that?" She pushed her plate away. "All this terrible death and funerals and corpses. How can you stand to do that to those poor people? Your father didn’t have brains enough to have any choice in the matter, but you’re different."