Skeleton Crew

Down the block a door slammed. Webber, who had to go all the way into the city, opened the slatted carport door and went inside, swinging his briefcase. The milkman waited for the waspy sound of his little Saab starting up and smiled when he heard it. Variety is the spice of life, Spike's mother—God rest her soul!—had been fond of saying, but we are Irish, and the Irish prefer to take their 'taters plain. Be regular in all ways, Spike, and you will be happy. And it was just as true as could be, he had found as he rolled down the road of life in his neat beige milk truck.

Only three houses left now.

At the Kincaids' he found a note which read "Nothing today, thanks" and left a capped milk bottle which looked empty but contained a deadly cyanide gas. At the Walkers' he left two quarts of milk and a pint of whipping cream.

By the time he reached the Merlons' at the end of the block, rays of sunlight were shining through the trees and dappling the faded hopscotch grid on the sidewalk which passed the Mertons' yard.

Spike bent, picked up what looked like a pretty damned good hopscotching rock—flat on one side—and tossed it. The pebble landed on a line. He shook his head, grinned, and went up the walk, whistling.

The light breeze brought him the smell of industrial laundry soap, making him think again of Rocky. He was surer all the time that he would be seeing Rocky. Tonight.

Here the note was pinned in the Merlons' newspaper holder: Cancel Spike opened the door and went in.

The house was crypt-cold and without furniture. Barren it was, stripped to the walls.

Even the stove in the kitchen was gone; there was a brighter square of linoleum where it had stood.

In the living room, every scrap of wallpaper had been removed from the walls. The globe was gone from the overhead light. The bulb had been fused black. A huge splotch of drying blood covered part of one wall. It looked like a psychiatrist's inkblot. In the center of it a crater had been gouged deeply into the plaster. There was a matted clump of hair in this crater, and a few splinters of bone.

The milkman nodded, went back out, and stood on the porch for a moment. It would be a fine day. The sky was already bluer than a baby's eye, and patched with guileless little fairweather clouds... the ones baseball players call "angels." He pulled the note from the newspaper holder and crumpled it into a ball. He put it in the left front pocket of his white milkman's pants.

He went back to his truck, kicking the stone from the hopscotch grid into the gutter. The milk truck rattled around the corner and was gone.

The day brightened.

A boy banged out of a house, grinned up at the sky, and brought in the milk.

 

 

Big Wheels: A Tale of The Laundry Game

Rocky and Leo, both drunk as the last lords of creation, cruised slowly down Culver Street and then out along Balfour Avenue toward Crescent. They were ensconced in Rocky's 1957 Chrysler. Between them, balanced with drunken care on the monstrous hump of the Chrysler's drive shaft, sat a case of Iron City beer. It was their second case of the evening—the evening had actually begun at four in the afternoon, which was punch-out time at the laundry.

"Shit on a shingle!" Rocky said, stopping at the red blinker-light above the intersection of Balfour Avenue and Highway 99. He did not look for traffic in either direction, but did cast a sly glance behind them. A half-full can of I.C., emblazoned with a colorful picture of Terry Bradshaw, rested against his crotch. He took a swig and then turned left on 99. The universal joint made a thick grunting sound as they started chuggingly off in second gear. The Chrysler had lost its first gear some two months ago.

"Gimme a shingle and I'll shit on it," Leo said obligingly.

"What time is it?" Leo held his watch up until it was almost touching the tip of his cigarette and then puffed madly until he could get a reading. "Almost eight."

"Shit on a shingle!" They passed a sign, which read PITTSBURGH 44.

"Nobody is going to inspect this here Detroit honey," Leo said. "Nobody in his right mind, at least." Rocky fetched third gear. The universal moaned to itself, and the Chrysler began to have the automotive equivalent of a petit mal epileptic seizure. The spasm eventually passed, and the speedometer climbed tiredly to forty. It hung there precariously.

When they reached the intersection of Highway 99 and Devon Stream Road (Devon Stream formed the border between the townships of Crescent and Devon for some eight miles), Rocky turned onto the latter almost upon a whim—although perhaps even then some memory of ole Stiff Socks had begun to stir deep down in what passed for Rocky's subconscious.