Part 1 (1/2)

The Missing Boatman.

By Keith C. Blackmore.

For Kate Anne Jack (I owe you several), Rod Redden (for reading it first), and Cathy Ryan (for pointing things out).

Chapter 1.

Combing his thinning but still black hair with his fingers, Samuel Tobbler drove his well-preserved 1995 Colony Park station wagon on the Trans-Canada highway, heading northeast on a wintry Sat.u.r.day night. He wanted to be home in his native New Brunswick before dawn, and, having no family or wife, the decision to drive out into the night was an easy one. The office would call him a fool for not waiting until morning, but he didn't care. Sam had stopped at a Tim Hortons before setting out that evening and had, to this point, devoured half a box of Timbits. The bite-sized doughnuts were made for driving and snacking and Sam's fingers kept finding their take-out box.

Peering ahead at the black velvet strip of highway illuminated by his headlights, Sam saw the road had only been partially cleared and salted. His eyes never left the gum-diseased blackness of the asphalt, and twice he caught himself drifting off, into the dangerous blur between consciousness and hypnosis. Drifting snow snaked across his path and attacked his headlights. It was only 10:42 and Sam figured on being in his own bed with a good five to six hours of sleep behind him at this time in the morning. He had burned some music onto a CD, all the noisiest industrial metal he could get his hands on, but he wasn't really listening to the mix. The noise was there to keep him awake.

Sam was a robust forty-two and, at one time, had had his own radio show during his university days in Nova Scotia. His taste for a wide spread of music had never lessened, and while he thought there was plenty of garbage put out during the mid-nineties, the new century had grown a modest crop of interesting contemporary music. He didn't want anything soft on his night drive. It would be too relaxing, too lulling, even though the war drums of the metal music had almost failed him twice this night. The noise was also there to help keep him from feeling lonely. It was a long, cold, black tongue of highway, even longer at night, and deep into the scream of winter. Very seldom did he see the red eyes of another car ahead of him, or the blind whites of oncoming traffic. When he did, they were only there for a few minutes before arching off onto a ramp and disappearing into the night, swallowed and gone.

His thoughts were currently on the month of February and how he could raise his sales just a few margins more. He knew of a youth counselor, perhaps twenty seven or so; a young buck in his s.e.xual prime. Pressed softly enough-Sam never thought of it as a hard sell, but rather steady convincing-he could make the youngster aware of his own mortality. Especially if he could lock the counselor into a permanent policy guaranteed to stick with him even in the advent of something worse than HIV or any other G.o.d-awful s.e.xual disease. Sam believed that if he called the policy a lifelong license to f.u.c.k, he'd have no trouble at all selling the plans.

Wayne. The guy's name was Wayne. Sam would have to pay Wayne a visit tomorrow, or at least give the man a call, and try to set up a first meeting. He would never discuss money during that first consultation. That was too coa.r.s.e and the mark of a newbie. Sam was smooth. He would plant the seeds of need in his prospect's mind. On the second meeting, however, he would talk policies and money. He had an eighty-five percent-success rate when it came to signing clients up if he met them a second time. And so they should. Making potential clients aware of their own mortality and what could become of their families if, for some dreadful reason, they were suddenly taken by death was a n.o.ble cause in Sam's opinion.

Stowing away that name for tomorrow, Sam reached into the box of Timbits with his right hand. He felt the remainder of the holeless mouth-sized dough b.a.l.l.s. The chocolate glazed ones had disappeared about twenty minutes ago. Those were his favorite. He fumbled around in the box. There might be one or two left on the bottom that he might have missed. Little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds had a way of doing that to him sometimes. In his eagerness to find something no longer there, he flipped the box and its remaining contents onto the floor of his wagon.

”s.h.i.+t,” Sam muttered, eyes flicking back and forth now, from the night road ahead to the shadows below the car's red and green glowing instrument panel. There were Timbits down there. G.o.d forbid any to land on the seat. Oh no, the little sugar s.h.i.+ts had to drop to the floor. Murphy's Law, he supposed, and stretched his arm to reach beneath the gas pedal. His eyes peeped over the dash. Sam briefly imagined he would be this close to the steering wheel when he was eighty.

His fingers nudged a gathering of Timbits, pus.h.i.+ng them away.

”s.h.i.+t again,” he swore, his nose practically on the rim of the steering wheel, his dim reflection in the speedometer and the winds.h.i.+eld above. The needle held steady at one hundred kilometers an hour.

And again he pushed the elusive dough bits away.

”Gawddammit,” he said, exasperated, and chanced a look downwards to spot the snacks. He took his eyes off the road, and his car began to drift to the side. The tires out of alignment just enough to take the vehicle off its straight course.

Only a second later did his right tire strike a patch of thick slush. The car slipped further to the right, the tire cutting though a stiff drift of snow. The snow gripped the tire, twisting it enough to jerk the steering column and wheel.

Then it was all ice.

”JESUS!”

Sam's Colony Park whirled across the highway and shot off into a snow-gorged trench. The car flipped over, crash-landing on its roof. Snow exploded against the winds.h.i.+eld with a dull whump! and a dark spider-web of cracks appeared across its entire length. The seatbelt held him, and, as he was leaning forward, it did what it could to save him. Sam cracked his nose violently into the flas.h.i.+ng dash, releasing a gout of blood like a broken faucet. His face was thrown into the steering column a split second after his nose was broken, crus.h.i.+ng a cheek and sending bone fragments into his sinus cavity with the force of an industrial nail gun. Sam's teeth clamped shut on part of his tongue, scissoring through the muscle as clean as sheet metal cutters and causing a jet of blood to spray out forcefully on impact. A stereo k.n.o.b broke the orbital bone protecting his left eye, puncturing the white of his eye a microsecond later. His body jerked, stopped from going any further by his seatbelt, but his upper body snapped forward like a frayed steel cable. His knees went into the lower dashboard and split skin underneath. His shoulder popped out of its socket. The seatbelt went tight across his abdominal area, purpling his waistline in an instant. For a brief second, Sam's world rained Timbits, but he could have cared less for any of them, even if they were chocolate. He felt as if he had let go enough homemade chocolate in the seat of his trousers to forever cure him of the affliction.

In the quiet stillness of the aftermath, Sam hung against his seat belt, upside down, breathing as if he were in a natural birth cla.s.s. Everything above his dash was black. Snow pushed against his winds.h.i.+eld. Blood dripped to his roof. His shoulder did not respond but screamed at his brain. His entire face buzzed. He was fortunate. Shock dampened much of his agony.

”Sweet gawd,” Sam breathed, his words coming out strange and his mouth stinging as if he were chewing on broken gla.s.s. ”Sweet jaysus. I'm alive.”

Sam's breath slowed a bit as he began to get a grasp of the situation. His breath chilled in the air, and he felt something very wrong in his mouth. He weakly spat and drooled a long dark length of something out of his mouth, and wiped it with one hand. He didn't want to look at it. Cras.h.i.+ng had been sudden and terrifying enough for him. It was like something had grabbed the tire and steering wheel at the same time. But if he was going to pick a season, thank the Lord for winter. The snow had cus.h.i.+oned the impact and damage considerably. Probably d.a.m.ned well saved his life. He would call the offices of the Department of Transportation in the morning and chew them out a new a.s.shole for their ineffective highway clearing. And what happened to his airbag?

Unbuckling his belt, he eased himself onto his roof. He slowly got a hold of his predicament. He was alive with most limbs working. He gingerly touched his mouth and winced. His eye stung like f.u.c.k, as did his shoulder. Perhaps he had a mild concussion. Whiplash even.

Then there was the rest of him, as he became aware of his hurts.

Sam groaned in growing pain as he reached, slowly, for the dash on the pa.s.senger's side. He searched for the cell phone in the glove compartment and the roadside a.s.sistance number. A thirty minute wait tops and someone would- There was a sharp rapping on his door.

Sam's head slowly came about. All he could see was snow and blackness.

”You okay in there?” a m.u.f.fled voice called out anxiously.

”Yeah, fine. Just fine!” Sam shouted back, and grimaced. ”I think I s.h.i.+t myself, but I'm fine!”

”Really?” the voice was amused. ”How about getting you out of there?”

”Yeah, love to! How?”

”Well, you're in the snow just deep enough to cover--”hands scooped away a section of snow on Sam's door, and he could see a dark face looking in, ”-your windows. Hey. How you doing?”

The face smiled, glad Sam was all right, but it glanced anxiously this way and that, almost as if looking for others.

”It's just... just me in here. Just me. Got a little busted up, but...I think... nothing serious... considering everything.”

”Yeah,” the smiling face agreed. ”Nothing at all...” the voice trailed off. ”Lucky for me you're not dead. I don't think I could handle that.”

Sam chuckled at that and grimaced at the pain. He couldn't handle dying either.

”Can you open the door?”

”I think so,” Sam moved around and tried the latch. The door opened with a cranky groan. Cold winter wind stung Sam's face, and he was grateful for it.

”Let's get you out of there.” The man reached in with two large hands and gripped Sam's winter parka. Effortlessly, the stranger pulled Sam from the car and tossed him like a sack of sand onto the snow. The salesman landed on his back with a yelp. His neck and body flared with pain, bright and unmistakable.

”Christ! Why'd you do that for?” Sam grated. ”I didn't live through the crash to be killed by you! Could've broken my d.a.m.n neck.”

His savior turned out to be a big man with a shaven head. He laughed unexpectedly at the remarks, as if he had just h.o.a.rked into the teacher's water gla.s.s without getting caught. It was a high pitched sound that reached over the cold singing of the wind.

Sam's eyes slowly narrowed in disbelief.

”Relax,” the man finally got out. ”I ain't here to kill you. The last thing on my mind, really.”

Sam saw, but he had trouble wrestling his mind around the image of his rescuer producing a tire iron at arm's length. As out of place as it seemed, Sam also realized that the guy before him was only wearing a thin denim jacket, open to the waist and exposing a red checked s.h.i.+rt underneath. A smile split the man's dark features, and Sam thought briefly of the human skeleton standing at attention in his old high school's laboratory. There was nothing friendly in that grin, just an unspoken confidence that, though things were fine now, they would be changing shortly.

And then the expression morphed into one of sympathy.

”I am gonna make things a mite bit more... uncomfortable.”

The dark figure reared up the tire iron as if it were a baseball bat. He gave it a test swing, once, twice, and then stepped up to the plate.

Except there was no plate.