Short Story:
BUS STOP
by Keith Gilman
The alarm came in around one in the morning. The Victorian Arms Apartments was on fire. Most of the residents were well over seventy and would have slept right through it. The place could burn to the ground and nobody would ever wake up.
The stairways filled with smoke and fireman spent hours lowering the aged invalids from their second and third floor balconies. Fire trucks surrounded the building, ladders raised, long, heavy hoses filling with water. They got the fire out and breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t been worse.
Most of the damage was contained to a first floor apartment where the fire got started. The building was old and out of date and renovating it was going to be a project. There wasn’t much left to save. The place had to be gutted and entirely rebuilt.
The Red Cross put up the residents in one of their shelters, those that didn’t have family nearby.
Charred furniture still sat in a heap behind the building, a forgotten monument in a deserted parking lot. Metal springs from a bed and an old couch lay like a skeleton under the winter sky, the flesh burned off, like the bones of some dead animal rotting on the forest floor. Rust was already crawling over the metal, beginning the slow process of decay. An old kitchen table sat next to it and a stove, both black as coal.
*****
Joe Fields was a union carpenter, working at the Victorian Arms. He looked at that pile of junk every morning and wondered when they would haul it away, wondered why anyone would sink money into the place, wondered if anyone would ever live there again.
It was indoor work though and in early February, that was a blessing. Joe usually met Jerry Stankewicz in the lot before work. They parked their pick-ups side by side, sipped coffee and smoked.
“You ever see that girl standing out there every morning,” Jerry asked?
“Sure, I’ve seen her, across the street. She’s there all day, just stands there with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. Looks like some kind of nut job,” Joe answered.
“She must freeze her ass off. What do you think her problem is?”
“You never know with that type. But I got just the thing to cure her.”
“They all need the same thing, right.”
“You got it. I’ve seen perfectly normal, middle-age women just lose it, go off the deep end for no good reason. One day they’re fine and the next, they’re stumbling around the park like a lost dog. Maybe their husbands leave them or their cat gets run over by a car. Whatever it is, they end up having to be doped up just to get through the day. When all they really need is a little sweet talk and some love.”
Joe took a long drag off the cigarette and flung it onto the cold ground.
“Let’s go inside.”
They hopped out of their trucks in unison. Joe dumped the remaining cold coffee and it froze almost as soon as it hit the pavement. The wind was biting against his face and the ground was slippery with a thin coat of ice. The sun usually warmed things up by late afternoon until it froze again overnight.
The front door of the building was chained with a padlock. Two large pieces of plywood hung where the thick glass had been broken. Stepping into the lobby was like stepping back in time. The carpet was lime green with orange squares, connected at the corners. The yellow and white striped wallpaper peeled near the ceiling. A row of tin mailboxes lined the wall. Broken glass littered the floor.
“This must have been some place, once upon a time. If the walls could only talk,” Jerry said.
“It’ll never be the same. They should just tear it down, demolish the whole damn place,” Joe said. “Some things are beyond repair.”
“You’re right. This old building has definitely seen better days.”
Jerry and Joe hung sheetrock in the first floor apartment, where the fire started. The rooms were black like the inside of a brick oven, shadows burned onto the wall. The newspaper claimed that the cause was a candle on the kitchen counter. The curtains caught and must have burned for a while because by the time the fire company arrived, it was an inferno.
Joe ran a finger over the blackened cinder block and looked at the thick soot on his fingertip. He wiped it off on his pants and glanced through the window at the girl outside.
Her face was red and chapped from the cold, under a green knit hat with a fuzzy white ball on top and white reindeers prancing in a circle. Her jacket was brown suede, worn thin with age. Her boots were also brown suede, the cuffs of her jeans tucked inside. She kept her arms folded tightly in front of her, huddled against the winter wind. She was probably in her early thirties, Joe thought, but wouldn’t look that way for long.
A group of children stood on the sidewalk waiting for the schoolbus. They circled together, all hats and gloves and scarves, their little faces poking through the material. She watched them from the ice encrusted grass, no more than ten yards away, watched their moms wave good-bye. The kids climbed the steps onto the bus, turning for one last glance at their watchful parents, before grabbing their special seat.
She stood there all day, still as a statue of weathered stone. Sometimes, she would rock back and forth, hypnotized by the steady motion, like a child on a rocking horse. She was there when Joe and Jerry went to lunch and when they returned. She was there when the school bus returned and emptied the children onto the snowy sidewalk, into the arms of their waiting mothers.
Some afternoons, a coven of dark gray clouds blew overhead and the snow flew with numbing rage. She never moved from that spot, and when the day was done and the men left work at the Victorian Arms, went home to their wives and children, there she was, part of the landscape, an empty frozen shell.
No one knew where she went at night, where she slept or where she lived. No one ever saw her come or go. She was just there, all the time. Friday afternoon, on his way home, Joe pulled his truck up in front of her and rolled down the window.
“Get in. I’ll give you a ride. You can’t stay there all night.”
There was no response, no recognition at all. Her eyes remained focused on the apartment building across the street, a vacant, hypnotic stare as if someone was staring back, eyes behind the black windows, voices through the closed mouth of the front door.
It was like talking to a scarecrow in a cornfield. A gust of cold air suddenly lifted a pile of dead, brown leaves from the gutter and sent them sailing through the open window of the truck. Joe knit his brow against the blast. The wind seemed to grow angrier with the coming of night. He brushed the leaves from his lap and tried again, extending an open hand.
“Come on. I’ll take you home.”
As if his words and the wind had awakened her from sleep, she turned toward him, looked right through him, the statue coming slowly alive. Her eyes were black, ringed with red and crusted like they’d been sealed shut and pried open. She walked slowly around to the passenger side, the stiffness in her limbs evident in every step. She could barely summon the strength to open the door. She climbed in and slid cautiously onto the seat.
“My name is Joe. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Where to?”
She looked out the window as the truck began to move. Winter nights came early and the grayness of dusk was quickly fading to darkness. Her hand clutched the door handle, trembling as the truck picked up speed. A layer of moisture formed on her face from the rising heat.
“You can take your hat off if you’re hot.”
She spun in the seat and glared at him with burning, tormented eyes.
“Stop the car! Stop the car!”
“Why all the hostility, honey? I don’t mean you no harm. I’m trying to help.”
“You think it’s funny, don’t you. It’s real funny. You don’t care. Why should you?”
“Hey, take it easy. You’re not making any sense.”
“You don’t understand. How could you? You can’t help. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault!”
Her hands flailed like she was drowning, like she was sinking in a pit of quicksand and no matter how hard she struggled to stay afloat, no matter what she did, somehow she knew, she would inevitably get buried alive.
She pulled the handle and jerked open the door. She rolled out like a skydiver from a plane. Her head hit the pavement and just missed falling under the spinning tires.
By the time Joe stopped the truck and got to her, she was barely conscious, mumbling incomprehensibly under her breath. Her hat was soaked with blood. The side of her face was scraped raw, caked with dirt, gravel and blood. Joe didn’t touch her, thought it best not to move her. He called for an ambulance, sat on the curb alongside her and waited.
He followed the ambulance to Mercy Hospital where he spoke with a waiting police officer and a couple of nurses. She’d been there before. The police had received numerous complaints but they didn’t know what to do with her. They’d patch her up, try to talk to her, and eventually, let her go. The cop told Joe the story, what he knew of the most recent events of her life.
*****
Her name was Carol Nolan and she was new in town, moved into the Victorian Arms Apartments about a month ago, a single mom taking care of a young handicapped son. By all accounts, she was a very dedicated mother. She sent her kid to special school, got him on the bus every morning, waited for him at the bus stop across the street every afternoon. She never did anything without him. He was her whole life.
The boy’s name was Chris and in a very short time, he was adopted by some of the elderly residents of the Victorian Arms. They would play with him in the hallway and in the laundry room, in the basement, while his mom did the wash. They took turns watching Chris in the small back yard, letting him dig in the soft dirt by the fence and climb the twisted branches of an old Maple tree. Carol and little Chris were just starting to get comfortable in their new home.
Carol had even met a young man who was also new in the building. He lived two doors down on the first floor. His name was Stephen and was recently hired as a photographer with a local newspaper. They didn’t get to spend much time together but as the weeks went on they managed to meet more often, late, after Chris was tucked into bed.
The last night they spent together, Chris wasn’t feeling well and had fallen asleep early. He’d stayed home from school that day with a high fever and Carol sat by his bed all day long, letting him suck on cherry popsicles and spooning the medicine into his mouth. Finally, after the fever broke, she lit a candle in the kitchen, opened a book and waited for Stephen to get home from work.
Soon she heard the faint tapping at her door. She slipped out and into Stephen’s apartment. It was the only thing she ever did for herself, a few moments with a man, something she hadn’t had in a long time. She was never away for more than an hour.
She laid her head on Stephen’s shoulder, felt the heat from his body, breathed in the faint smell of his cologne. They were quiet and still, both of them treasuring a rare moment of tranquility. They fell asleep in each other’s arms.
She awoke to the smell of smoke. She shook Stephen and they ran naked into the hallway. The smoke was thick and coming from her apartment. The door was locked and Stephen kicked it in. He was immediately hit in the face with a cloud of heavy black smoke. The flames shot out and crawled across the ceiling.
They both fought the suffocating smoke and searing heat to get inside but their efforts were in vain. The police and firemen pulled them out. Ten minutes later they brought out Chris. He hid from the flames under his bed. He was black as smoke, black as the charred walls and carpet, black as death.
*****
Monday morning, Joe met Jerry, as usual, for coffee and cigarettes before work. It was a brutally cold morning, below zero, and the coffee tasted bitter and hotter than usual, like it had been boiling in the pot too long. Joe drank his black. Jerry preferred a little Irish Cream. They cut their morning ritual short, sucked down the cigarettes and went inside.
“What the hell happened with that girl,” Jerry asked? “I saw her get into your truck.”
“It’s a long story, man, and it doesn’t have a happy ending.”
“You didn’t cure her.”
“Not exactly. She dove out of the truck doing about forty miles an hour, scrambled her eggs on the road. The ambulance took her to the hospital and the cop up there told me all about her. She’s nuts, like I told you. I mean scary nuts.”
They walked down the hallway on the first floor. Jerry cupped his hands over his mouth and tried to warm them with his breath. Joe opened the apartment door. The door hadn’t been closed all the way and the lock looked broken. The morning light was just beginning to creep through the window.
They set their tools on the dusty floor. Jerry lit a kerosene heater. Once that thing got going, it took the chill out of the air and they stood over it, holding out their hands like scouts around a campfire. The two men exchanged a knowing glance. The Victorian Arms would always be cold and dark, frozen in the past, no matter what Jerry and Joe did to fix her up.
“Did you forget to lock the door yesterday,” Joe asked, lighting another cigarette.
“You usually lock the door, Joe.”
“Yeah but you were the last one out yesterday.”
“I don’t remember.”
They took off their jackets and hung them on a couple of nails Joe had hammered into the wall, as if he was hanging a picture. Their work was almost done. They only had to paint the bedroom and lay the linoleum in the bathroom. The carpet guys had already been in to measure. Joe thought it must have been them who left the door open.
They wandered into the bedroom with full cans of paint and clean brushes. A row of spotlights was set up against the wall. Joe fumbled with the switch. They came on one at a time.
Carol Nolan hung from a beam in the center of the room, an orange extension cord around her neck. A chair was tipped over on the floor. Her body dangled limp and lifeless in the cold morning air, her head tilted to one side. Her face was purple, almost black. Her tongue stuck out, her mouth frozen into a distorted smile, her eyes swollen and protruding in their sockets like she’d seen a ghost.
Outside, they heard the schoolbus churning up the street, making its last stop of the morning. Red flashing lights reflected off the clean pane of new glass. They heard the heavy idle of its motor, the vibration of rubber on the road, the squeal of brakes. They heard the singing voices of children climbing aboard.
About the Author:
Keith Gilman is a cop that writes crime fiction. His stories have appeared in a variety of internet crime magazines and print anthologies. He is the winner of the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers Novel Contest. His first novel, tentatively titled, "Father's Day," is due out Summer '08 by St. Martin's Minotaur.