The Vampire of Majik Mart 139
This one's in The Good Witch universe.
Rain fell on the gas pump awning like a 50-pound bagfull of dried beans pouring into a washtub.
Those drops were hard, too. Put an eye out if you looked up.
But no one was looking up. No one had been inside Majik Mart 139 all night but the new preacher, and he was long gone.
I had given up on writing the great Tennessee novel and was writing down my thoughts — much like I am tonight — and the only thing I could bring to mind to continue the comparison to dried beans was that I was durn hungry.
I started thinking about what I could put in my belly. Nothing in the store was safe for me but the bottled water. And what I really wanted — a big pot of beans with a ham bone and lots of ham scraps and plenty of thick, peppery pot likker — I couldn’t have.
About that time a Fred Sanford-looking truck pulled up in front of the doors, right beside the No Parking, No Idling sign. Mike Moss hopped out, slammed the door, and came running through like someone was about to give him a bath.
No worries, Mike, I thought. Ain’t no water touched you yet.
I mean, he’s not that dirty. Installs heating and air for a big-name company, so I’m sure they have some kind of standard he has to keep up. Just not sure what that standard is.
Mike Moss is short and round, red-faced and clean-shaven. Cuffs his overall pants up rather than hemming them. He asked me for a pouch of America’s Best and a couple of scratch-off cards.
“Mighty wet out,” he said, and a lot of dumb shit like that, and while he was fooling around with the scratch-off cards and forgetting how they worked, I figured out he was drunk. Sure enough, he started rooting around in the back of the store and finally he tried the cooler doors and of course they were locked. He started rattling the doors, yanking the handles.
“Mike, you know I close the coolers at 2 a.m.”
“Why?”
“Keep drunks from getting even drunker.”
“Reese, boy, I bet you love this kind of weather. Yessiree, this is your kind of weather.”
He got to the front of the store and leaned on the counter. Behind the counter I had my beating stick. I hadn’t picked Mike as someone to need the beating stick, but you never can tell. But I’m a man of peace. I played along.
“Why is this my kind of weather?”
“Because you walk on water!”
Little pisser just about died laughing at that. Slapped the counter as tears rolled out of his eyes.
I glanced up at the mirror the company makes us hang up to show if we employees are stealing money back here, and of course there was no reflection, but I knew what I’d see if I could. Skinny fucker, happen 30 years old, with long brown hair tied back in a ponytail, just a whisper of beard and side whiskers, thin as a fencepost with kind of delicate Celtic features (so I flatter myself) and good cheekbones (definitely flattering myself). Pale as wax, because I never go out in the sun. More or less, the kind of long-haired, deep-eyed guy the wags around here like to call Jesus. Or Hay-Suss, when they think they’re really hilarious.
“Good one, Mike.”
“Wasn’t it? Yeah, we’re buddies. Now, I need you to sell me some beer. I need me some beer.”
“You need to get home where it’s warm and dry.”
There was a floor display of stacked cases of some kind of weasel piss — as goddess Caitlin Kiernan calls the rankest of beers — and suddenly Mike’s eyes focused on the fact that the blue cardboard boxes contained something approaching potable alcohol. He grabbed a case and put it on the counter.
“I’ll take this.”
“No, you won’t. No beer after 2 a.m. That’s the law. Come back at dawn.”
So saying, I grabbed that case and went to pull it away from him and that’s when he grabbed my arm with one of those hard-working HVAC hands, and wouldn’t let go. Said something like, “I’m gonna whup your ass,” but that was just the drunk talking. Mike ain’t a bad sort, really. But his grip was twisting and bruising me, hurting, and I saw red and I realized I’d better use the beating stick because if I let things get any further it wouldn’t go well for Mike.
So I slid the beating stick — a walnut wand, happen 18 inches long and an inch and a half in diameter, that old Miz Glenda the manager keeps here — from under the counter and gave Mike’s forearm a crack.
He yelped and let go of me and the case. He was barreling out the front door when he ran right into Sergeant Wooten’s big belly.
Well, there was a scuffle and some explanations and some fat lies from Mike, but Sergeant Wooten knows me okay, and in a few minutes Mike was cooling down in the patrol car.
Sergeant came and looked at my arm, which was bruising all kinds of cool colors. My blood doesn’t clot right, see. Sergeant is a big fatherly guy, ruddy colored skin and hair, kind and canny like a cop in the movies, but there’s a splinter of ice in his heart.
I don’t know if it was ice or lovingkindness, but he told me: “You know, Reese, hitting that boy could have made him madder, and he’s a whole lot stronger than you.”
It was humiliating, but no lies detected. I nodded.
“I might not be here, out in the boonies, to check up on you.” He waited for me to make eye contact, and after a while, I did.
“Next time, if you gotta hit him, you drop him.”
I gave an awkward laugh. “Now you’re pulling my leg.”
“Certainly not. Here’s what you say.” He was about to tell me. I took out the greasy rag I clean with and started wiping the counter top. I could see the veins in his hand and when I looked up I could see the pulse in his fat throat.
See it? I could smell it.
I didn’t feel so well.
“I’ll ask you, ‘Did he threaten you?’”
“Well he did, but he didn’t mean a thing by it.”
“No, don’t embellish. Then I’ll say, ‘Were you afraid for your life?’ And you’ll say — ”
I kept wiping that counter. To every other convenience store clerk in town this was a combination of a good joke and good advice, but to me it was neither.
“You’ll say, ‘Yes sir, I was.’”
I was suddenly more afraid of Sergeant Wooten than I have ever been afraid of any living man. I mean, of course that’s the routine, you’re a clerk, you’re alone, the cop might be your friend but he’s not always there, and people tend to get weird at three in the morning. You need the cop to back your play, and here he was letting me know he had my back.
I guess I’m an ungrateful little shit.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
“Good boy.” I’m 50 now, but no one remembers that. “You got any coffee?”
Coffee! I was so sorry I couldn’t be more appreciative that I made him a fresh pot and gave him all the Krispy Kremes left on the shelf.
Dawn comes early. Rain petered off about sunrise, and Sergeant Wooten got tired of listening to himself talk and rolled out to see whether Mike Moss had thrown up in the patrol car.
I stood under the awning. Hidden in the valley, the crick steamed — a green smell like a song. Sun touched oil slicks on the pavement and outlined the long ridge of Pin Oak Mountain. The air was warming up fast. I needed to empty the trash cans before it got too light, but I stood there a long time while the rosy shafts pierced my eyes. I cannot cry, but as the sun crested the ridge, dew beaded my eyelashes like tears.