36
Pack Martin—his name was actually Packard because his mother named him after a car that had been her father’s pride—lived in a house trailer on the southeast edge of town. It was an old trailer, its enameled finish faded and crackled like the glaze on an ancient vase. It was rusted in a few spots, dented, and set on a concrete-block foundation in a lot that was mostly weeds. Pack knew that many people in Moonlight Cove thought his place was an eyesore, but he just plain did not give a damn.
The trailer had an electrical hookup, an oil furnace, and plumbing, which was enough to meet his needs. He was warm, dry, and had a place to keep his beer. It was a veritable palace.
Best of all, the trailer had been paid for twenty-five years ago, with money he had inherited from his mother, so no mortgage hung over him. He had a little of the inheritance left, too, and rarely touched the principal. The interest amounted to nearly three hundred dollars a month, and he also had his disability check, earned by virtue of a fall he had taken three weeks after being inducted into the Army. The only real work in which Pack had ever engaged was all the reading and studying he had done to learn and memorize all of the subtlest and most complex symptoms of serious back injury, before reporting per the instructions on his draft notice.
He was born to be a man of leisure. He had known that much about himself from a young age. Work and him had nothing for each other. He figured he’d been scheduled to be born into a wealthy family, but something had gotten screwed up and he’d wound up as the son of a waitress who’d been just sufficiently industrious to provide him with a minimum inheritance.
But he envied no one. Every month he bought twelve or fourteen cases of cheap beer at the discount store out on the highway, and he had his TV, and with a bologna and mustard sandwich now and then, maybe some Fritos, he was happy enough.
By four o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, Pack was well into his second six-pack of the day, slumped in his tattered armchair, watching a game show on which the prize girl’s prime hooters, always revealed in low-cut dresses, were a lot more interesting than the MC, the contestants, or the questions.
The MC said, “So what’s your choice? Do you want what’s behind screen number one, screen number two, or screen number three?”
Talking back to the tube, Pack said, “I’ll take what’s in that cutie’s Maidenforrn, thank you very much,” and he swigged more beer.
Just then someone knocked on the door.
Pack did not get up or in any way acknowledge the knock. He had no friends, so visitors were of no interest to him. They were always either community do-gooders bringing him a box of food that he didn’t want, or offering to cut down his weeds and clean up his property, which he didn’t want, either, because he liked his weeds.
They knocked again.
Pack responded by turning up the volume on the TV.
They knocked harder.
“Go away,” Pack said.
They really pounded on the door, shaking the whole damn trailer.
“…What the hell?” Pack said. He clicked off the TV and got up.
The pounding was not repeated, but Pack heard a strange scraping noise against the side of the trailer.
And the place creaked on its foundation, which it sometimes did when the wind was blowing hard. Today, there was no wind.
“Kids,” Pack decided.
The Aikhorn family, which lived on the other side of the county road and two hundred yards to the south, had kids so ornery they ought to have been put to sleep with injections, pickled in formaldehyde, and displayed in some museum of criminal behavior. Those brats got a kick out of pushing cherry bombs through chinks in the foundation blocks, under the trailer, waking him with a bang in the middle of the night.
The scraping at the side of the trailer stopped, but now a couple of kids were walking around on the roof.