The Stake Read online

  “Do you have a map?” Larry asked.

  “Pete doesn’t believe in them,” Barbara told him, her voice pleasant. Amazing how she reserved the sarcasm for her husband. “It’s up to you, Peter. I’ve offered my opinion. Feel free to ignore it.”

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered. He started to turn the van around, and Larry saw the look of relief on Jean’s face.

  “If it’s the wrong road,” Larry told Barbara, “we hold you personally responsible.”

  She bared her teeth at him, then laughed softly.

  “That’s tellin‘ her, pal.” Pete turned the van onto the side road and stepped on the gas. He drove up the middle, ignoring the faded white line. There wasn’t enough left of the speed limit sign to read its numbers. The metal had been riddled with bullets. Some of the holes looked fresh, but many were fringed with rust. Pete pointed at the sign. “There’s some local color for you. Ol’ Barb’s reallygonna be in trouble if we not only take the wrong road, but get shot in the bargain.”

  “We’ll duck if we see any bargain hunters,” Larry said.

  “Ha! Good one! I hate to tell you, they’re in the backseat.”

  “Can’t miss at this range,” Jean said.

  “We’re dead meat.”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Petey. You’re no bargain.”

  “I know. I’m priceless. I’m also smart enough to know this isn’t the road to Sagebrush Flat. But here we are anyway.”

  “It was a good decision,” Larry assured him. “In my vast experience, I’ve found it always wiser to go along with female advice.”

  “That’s because it’s usually right,” Jean said.

  “Either way,” he told Pete, “you can’t lose. First, you make them happy by doing what they tell you. That’s the main thing. Let them think they’re in control. They love it. Then, if it turns out they were right, everything’s cool. If it turns out they were wrong...”

  “Which is usually the case,” Pete added.

  “Do they know what thin ice they’re on?” Jean asked.

  “If they’re wrong,” Larry went on, “then you have the pleasure of basking in the glow of superiority.”

  Pete grinned and nodded. “Hey, you oughta put that in one of your books.”

  “It wasin one of his books,” Barbara said. “If I’m not mistaken, a redneck cop spoke pretty much those very words in Dead of Night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “No kidding?” Larry asked, amazed that she had remembered such a thing.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  He’d quoted one of his own characters without even realizing it? Odd, he thought. And a little disturbing. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If you say so, I guess it’s there.”

  “The philosophy at work,” Pete said.

  “No, I mean it. I write so much... That book was a long time ago.”

  “I have the advantage,” Barbara said. “I just read it last month.”

  “Hey, maybe you’re becoming that guy. Turning into your redneck cop. There’s an idea for a story, huh? A writer starts turning into this character he made up.”

  “Has possibilities.”

  “Well, if you use it, remember where you got the idea.”

  “Ah-ha!” Barbara said. “Over on the left.”

  Looking across the road, Larry saw the ruins of an old structure. It no longer had a roof. The door and window-panes, if it ever had them, were gone. The upper portions of the walls had crumbled away, and some of the rocks that might once have formed the square enclosure now lay in rubble around it — returning to the desert from which they’d been taken.

  “Well,” Pete said, “I guess this isthe right road.”

  “Prince Henry.”

  “Doesn’t look like much of a ghost town,” Jean remarked.

  “That isn’t it,” Barbara told her. “But we stopped and had a look around before we got to Sagebrush Flat.”

  “Nothing much there,” Pete said. “Wanta take a quick look?”

  “I’d rather get on to the main attraction.”

  In spite of Jean’s earlier comments about her difficulties in getting him out of the house, they’d taken several day trips during the past year to explore the region. Sometimes with Pete and Barbara, a few times by themselves or with Lane — when they could drag their seventeen-year-old daughter away from home. On those outings, Larry had seen plenty of ruins similar to the one they were leaving behind. But not a real ghost town.

  “Don’t you always wonder who lived in places like that?” Jean asked.

  “Prospectors, I should think,” Pete said.

  “ ‘Dead guys,’ ” Larry quoted.

  “Leave it to you. The morbid touch.”

  “Actually, that was Lane’s comment. ‘Dead guys.’ Remember, hon?”

  “She went back to the car and waited for us that time. She wanted nothing to do with it.”

  “I know the feeling,” Barbara said. “I think this stuff’s interesting, but you gotta know that whoever lived there’s been pushing up daisies for a while.”

  “Cactus,” Pete said.

  “Whatever. Anyway, dead. Makes it kind of spooky.”

  “All the better for Larry here.”

  “Doesn’t bother me,” Jean said. “I just think it’s neat to see where they used to live, and, you know, imagine what it must’ve been like. It’s history.”

  “Speaking of history,” Larry said, “what do you know about this ghost town of yours?”

  “Not much,” Pete told him.

  “Hedoesn’t even know where it is.”

  “It must be in some of those guidebooks,” Jean said.

  “Nope. We checked.”

  “I guess it’s nothing all that special,” Pete said. “Maybe it’s not an official ghost town, or whatever it takes to get noticed — just a wide spot in the road that got deserted.” He suddenly grinned at Larry. “Hey, suppose it’s just there for us? You know? Like a figment of our imaginations.”

  “A ghostghost town.”

  “Yeah! How about that? Another idea for you. You’re gonna have to start paying me a consultant’s fee.”

  “You’d do better if you wrote the books yourself.”

  “Hey, maybe I oughta give it a try. How long does it take you to knock out one of those things?”

  “Six months, maybe, to write one. About twenty-five years to learn how.”

  “You’d better just stick to repairing televisions,” Barbara said.

  “We coming up on the turnoff?” he asked.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “We didn’t get any chance to explore the place last time,” Pete said. “Spent too much time screwing around back at that pile of rocks.”

  “Watch it, buster.”

  “Anyway, we had to get home for some party you were having, so we just drove right on through Sagebrush.”

  God, Larry thought, he’d meant it literally. Otherwise Barbara wouldn’t have reacted that way. They’d actually screwed in that old ruin. Inside those tumbledown walls. No door. No roof. Right out in the open, almost.

  For just a moment he was there. On top of Barbara. Her eyes were half shut, her lips peeled back, her naked body writhing under him as he thrust.

  He banished the image, ashamed of his minor betrayal and the desire it stirred. No harm in daydreaming, he told himself. He had such fantasies often, and not just about Barbara. But he’d never cheated on Jean. He planned to keep it that way.

  “You’re coming up on it,” Barbara said.

  Pete slowed nearly to a full stop by the time he made the right-hand turn. The road ahead looked as if it had gone ignored by a generation of repair crews. Only a few faint traces remained of its center line. The gray, sunbaked asphalt was cracked, crumbling, pocked with holes.

  The van pitched and bounced, swerved to miss the worst of the potholes. Larry found himself hanging onto the armrest.

  “You want to slow down?” Barbara suggested.


  “You want to get there, don’t you?”

  “In one piece, if that’s feasible.”

  A bump rammed the seat against Larry’s rump. His teeth clashed.

  “Goddamn it!” Barbara snapped.

  “Okay, okay. Didn’t see that one coming.”

  After he eased off the gas, the ride was still rough, but not punishing. Larry relaxed his grip on the armrest. Looking out his side window, he saw the rusted-out hulk of an overturned car. Its roof was mashed in and it had no wheels. It was well beyond the embankment bordering the road, surrounded by the desert’s litter of broken rock, by cactus and scrub brush. He couldn’t imagine how it had come to be belly-up. He considered mentioning the wreck, but decided to keep silent. The thing would probably inspire another story concept from Pete.

  No doubt a perfectly mundane explanation for how it got there. Maybe it broke down and was abandoned by the roadside. People had come along later, pushed it out there for the hell of it, and flipped it over. Had nothing better to do. If someone wanted to salvage the tires, rolling the thing probably seemed more sensible than jacking it up one corner at a time.

  Not just someone.

  Larry felt a quick rush of joy.

  A roving band of desert scavengers. A primitive, bloodthirsty pack.

  Maybe they don’t just wait for breakdowns. Maybe they block the road or booby-trap it, then ambush the unlucky travelers. They slaughter the men. They take the women back to their lair — maybe an abandoned mine — for fun and games.

  Not bad. Worth toying around with later to see if he could make it work. He needed a new idea. And soon.

  “Just around the bend,” Barbara said.

  Larry peered out the windshield, but the view ahead was blocked by low, rocky slopes. The road curved through a gap between the desolate rises.

  Maybe I can work the ghost town into the scavenger idea, he thought as they entered the narrow pass.

  “Thar she blows!” Pete announced.

  Two

  Along the road leading into Sagebrush Flat were the remains of shacks that had been picked apart by the desert winds. Houses of stone, adobe, and brick had fared better, but even those looked battered, their doors hanging open or gone, their windows smashed. Here and there boards lay scattered on the ground near doorways and windows. Larry supposed that the lumber had once been used to seal the dwellings.

  The weathered walls of the old houses were pocked with bullet holes, scribbled with sketches and messages in spray paint. Contributions from visitors to this dead town, making a playground of its carcass.

  Many of the yards were bordered by broken-down fences. Along with cactus and brush, Larry saw pieces of old furniture in front of some houses: a sofa, a couple of cane chairs, an aluminum lawn chair with its frame twisted crooked. One house had a bathtub off to the side. Another had an overturned bathroom toilet that looked as if it had been the subject of target practice. The rusted hood of a car was leaning against a porch. Nearby lay a couple of tires, and Larry recalled the abandoned, tireless car he’d seen a few minutes ago.

  “Isn’t exactly Beverly Hills, huh?” Pete remarked.

  “Love it,” Larry said.

  “Gee, and we forgot our spray cans,” Jean said. “How can we properly deface the place without our paint?”

  “We could shoot it up some.” Pete reached beneath his seat and came up with a revolver. It was sheathed in a beltless holster. Larry recognized it as the .357 Smith & Wesson that he’d fired a few times when they’d gone shooting last month. A beauty.

  “Put that away,” Barbara said. “For godsake.”

  “Just kidding around. Don’t get your balls in an uproar.”

  As he concealed the handgun under his seat, Barbara said, “Men and their toys.”

  Pete swung the van off the road and stopped beside a pair of gasoline pumps. He beeped the horn a couple of times as if signaling for service.

  “God,” Barbara muttered.

  “Hey, wouldn’t it be something if a guy showed up?”

  Larry gazed past the pumps. The porch stairs led up to a country store with a screen door hanging by a single hinge. A faded wooden sign above the doorway identified the place as Holman’s. A row of windows faced the road. Not a single pane was still intact. The window openings looked like mouths with sharp glass teeth.

  “Might as well start here,” Pete said.

  “Great,” Larry said. He thought it might be interesting to go through some of the houses they’d passed on the way in, but those could wait for another day. He was more eager to explore the downtown area.

  He climbed out of the van. The wind and heat hit him. Jean grimaced when she stepped down. The wind blew her hair back, made her blouse and skirt cling to the front of her slim body as if they were wet.

  “Better lock up,” Pete called.

  “There’s nobody around to steal anything,” Barbara said.

  “Would you rather I take the magnum along?”

  “Okay, okay, we’ll lock the doors.”

  Larry took care of their side. They met Pete and Barbara in front of the van.

  “I would feel better if we took the gun with us,” Pete said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t.”

  “You never know about a place like this.”

  “If you think it’s dangerous, we shouldn’t be here.” Barbara tossed her head to clear her face of blowing blond hair. The wind parted her untucked blouse below the last button, and Larry glimpsed a triangle of tanned belly.

  “Might be rattlers,” Pete said.

  “We’ll watch our step,” Jean told him. Like Larry, she was no doubt eager to end the gun debate before it could escalate into a quarrel.

  “Yeah,” Larry said. “And if we run into any bad guys, we’ll send you back here for the artillery.”

  “Oh, thanks. While you guys hide.”

  “You wouldn’t mind, would you, honey?”

  He answered by clamping a hand on Barbara’s rump. The way she flinched and jumped away, he must’ve done it hard. She whirled toward him. “Just watch it, huh?”

  “Let’s see what’s in Holman’s,” Jean said, and hurried toward the stairs.

  Larry went after her. “Careful,” he said. The boards, bleached pale, were warped and threaded with splits. The one before the top was broken in the middle, half gone and half hanging down by rusty nails.

  Jean held the railing, stepped over the demolished stair and made it safely across the porch. While she dragged the screen door open, Larry climbed the stairs. They creaked under his weight but held him.

  “You better not try it,” Pete warned Barbara, looking back at her as he trotted up the old planks. “You’ll snap ‘em like matchsticks.”

  “Give it a rest,” she said.

  Larry admired her restraint. It seemed so damn stupid of Pete to poke fun at his wife’s size. She was big, probably a shade over six feet tall. Though not a beanpole, like many tall women, she certainly wasn’t overweight. Larry had seen her in all kinds of attire, including swimsuits and nightgowns, and considered her body terrific. He knew that Pete was proud of her appearance. Pete was compact and powerful, but lifting all the weights in the world wouldn’t give him the six inches of height he would need to meet Barbara eye to eye.

  Instead of calling him “short stuff” or “pip-squeak,” she’d simply told him to give it a break. Admirable.

  She climbed the stairs without bursting any of them.

  Inside, Holman’s smelled of dry, ancient wood. Larry expected the place to be stifling, but the shade and the breeze from the broken windows kept it bearable. A thin layer of sand coated the hardwood floor. It had blown into small drifts against the walls, the foot of the L — shaped lunch counter, and the metal bases of the swivel stools along the counter.

  The eating area occupied about a third of the room. There had probably once been tables between the counter and the wall, but they were long gone.

  “Bet they served great cheeseburgers,�
� Jean said. She was very fond of diners with character. To Jean, dumpy old places that many people would disparage as “greasy spoons” promised delights unattainable in clean and modern fast-food chains.

  “Shakes,” Barbara said. “I could go for one about now.”

  “I could go for a beer,” Pete said.

  “I think I saw a saloon up the road,” Jean told him.

  “But they only serve Ghost-Light,” Larry said.

  “Let’s break a few out of the van before we move on.”

  “You’ve got a beer?” Larry could tasteit.

  “Surely you jest. The desert’s one dry mother. You think I’d brave her without my survival stash?”

  “All right!”

  Pete headed for the door.

  “Aren’t you going to look around?” Barbara asked.

  “What’s to see?” He hurried outside.

  “I guess he’s right,” Jean said, scanning the room.

  “The rest of it must’ve been a general store,” Larry said. “I bet they carried everything.”

  Nothing remained, not even shelves. Except for the lunch counter and stools, the room was bare. Behind the counter was a serving window. Farther down, Larry saw a closed door that probably connected with the kitchen. Past the end of the counter was an alcove. “That’s probably where the rest rooms were.”

  “I think I’ll check out the ladies‘,” Barbara said.

  “Lotsa luck,” Jean told her.

  “Can’t hurt to have a look.”

  She walked into the alcove, opened a door, and whirled away clutching her mouth.

  “Apparently,” Larry said, “it did hurt to take a look.”

  Barbara scrunched up her face.

  “You’re a little green around the gills,” Jean told her.

  She lowered her hand and took a deep breath. “Guess I’ll find a place around back.”

  They left Holman’s. She followed the porch, jumped off, and disappeared around a corner of the building.

  Larry and Jean went to the van. When Pete came out he had four bottles of beer clutched to his chest. “Where’s Barb?”

  “Went behind the building.”

  “Answering a call of nature,” Jean said.

  He scowled. “She shouldn’t have gone off by herself.”