Usher's Passing

THE PUMPKIN MAN WAS IN THE WOODS.



He wore a funeral suit of black velvet and a black top hat. His face was as yellow as spoiled milk. He carried a scythe that glowed electric blue in the moonlight, and with a wave of one skeletal hand he parted the underbrush before him. Those who had seen him and lived to tell the tale said his eyes shone like green lamps; his face was split by a cunning grin, his teeth sharpened to tiny points.



The Pumpkin Man was used to waiting. He had all the time in the world. Sooner or later a child would wander from a familiar path, or chase a rabbit into a place where shadows slanted like tombstones. Then there would be no more going home, ever again.



He carried his weapon in an easy grip, and sniffed the night wind for the human scent. A small animal tore away through the weeds. The Pumpkin Man stood like a statue, his only movement the slow sweep of his gelid gaze through the darkness.



He looked toward the Gatehouse, where the Usher boy was sleeping. The Usher boy had come home again. If the Usher boy didn't come out to play tomorrow evening - then there would always be the next. Or the next. He stood beneath the Usher boy's window, staring upward. Come out, come out and play, he whispered in a voice like the wind through dead trees. You're the one I want, little Usher boy -



When Rix forced himself awake, his nerves were jangling like fire alarms. He sat up in bed. The walls of his room were crisscrossed with shadows - tree branches, outlined by moonlight. He'd never had such a vivid nightmare about the Pumpkin Man before. The thing had looked like a picture he'd seen of Lon Chaney in London After Midnight, all hypnotic eyes and vampire teeth. Got to cut down on those damned late-night "Creature Features," he told himself. They're not too good for the old beauty sleep, are -



A floorboard creaked.



There was a shape standing over his bed. Watching him.



Before Rix could react - he was about to cry out like a child - a smoky feminine voice that dripped with honey whispered, "Shhhhh! It's me, sugah!"



He found the switch to the bedside lamp after much fumbling, and turned it on. Squinting in the light, he looked up at Puddin' Usher, his brother's wife.



She wore a diaphanous pink gown that clung to her body as if she'd been poured into it. Showing through the filmy material were the dark circles of her nipples and the darker vee between her thighs. She was about as naked as a woman could be without taking off her clothes. Her heavy blond mane cascaded around her bared shoulders. Puddin' wore full makeup, including bright red lipstick and champagne eyeshadow. Her eyes were dark brown, as unfathomable as Usherland's peaty lakes. She'd put on perhaps ten pounds since Rix last saw her, but she was still beautiful in a wild, coarse way. Her figure, stuffed into a red swimsuit a size too small, had won her the title of Miss North Carolina several years ago. In Atlantic City, she had twirled flaming batons in the talent competition, and she hadn't even made the finals. Her full-lipped, sexy mouth always made her look as if she was begging to be kissed - the harder, the better. But now her mouth had a bitter twist to it. Her face was taking on a hardness. Her eyes were vacant, disturbed. Rix smelled a wave of perfume - Chanel No. 5? - coming off her, but underneath that fragrance was a complex aroma of bourbon and body odor. In fact, Puddin' smelled as if she hadn't taken a bath in a week or more.



"What are you doing in here? Where's Boone?"



"Gone bye-bye," she said, and her mouth twisted again as she smiled. "Gone to that club of his to play poker till all fuckin' hours."



Rix looked at his wristwatch on the bedside table. A quarter of three. He rubbed his eyes. "What happened? You two have a fight?"



She shrugged. "Me and Boone have fights sometimes." She spoke with a thick backhills whang. "He left around midnight. They let him sleep at that club after he's lost his money and he's too drunk to drive home."



"Do you make a habit of sneaking into people's rooms? You scared the hell out of me."



"I didn't sneak. Sneakin' is when a door's locked." There were no locks on the doors to Rix's, Boone's, or Katt's bedrooms. Puddin' frowned at him. "You're lookin' kinda puny. You been sick or somethin'?"



"Or something. Why don't you pour yourself into your room and go to sleep?"



"I want to talk. Please. I've got to talk to somebody, or I'll go right fuckin' out of my bird!"



Same old Puddin', Rix thought. When she was drunk, she could swear a truck driver's face blue. "What about?" he asked, against his better judgment.



"If you was a gentleman, you'd ask me to sit down."



He motioned reluctantly toward a chair. Puddin' chose to sit on the edge of the bed. Her gown hiked up over her thighs. There was a heart-shaped birthmark on her left knee. Damn, Rix thought; his body was responding, and he raised his knees under the sheet to make a tent. Puddin' picked at a long, copper-painted fingernail for a moment. "I cain't talk to nobody 'round here," she whined. "They don't like me."



"I thought you and Katt were friends."



"Katt's too busy for friends. Either she's out ridin' on the estate, or she's on that telephone. One time she talked to a guy in Venice for two whole fuckin' hours! Now who in hell can talk on a phone that long?"



"Do you also listen in on people's phone conversations?"



She tossed her head impudently. "I get bored. There ain't a whole hell of a lot to do, y' understand? Boone pays more attention to those goddamned horses than he does to me." She giggled. "Maybe if I put a saddle on my back, he'd get a hard-on, right?"



"Puddin'," Rix said wearily, "what's this all about?"



"You've . . . always kinda liked me, ain't you?"



"We hardly know each other."



"But what you know, you like. Don't you?" She touched his hand.



"I guess so." Though he knew he should, he didn't move his hand. His groin stirred.



Puddin' smiled. "I thought so. A woman can tell. You know, the gleam in a man's eye and all. You should've seen those men judges in Atlantic City sit tall when I come out on stage. You could almost hear their cocks thump against the bottom of that desk. Old stuck-up bitches was the ones voted against me."



"I think you'd better go back to your room." He wrinkled his nose. "When was the last time you had a bath?"



"Soap causes cancer," she replied. "I heard it on the news. There's something in soap that gives you cancer. Know what's best for your skin? Gelatin. Know what that is? It's Jell-O, I put Jell-O in the bathtub and let it sit until it gets real firm. Then I get in and wiggle around. Orange is best, 'cause it's got vitamin C in it too."



He wanted to ask her if she was losing her mind, but didn't. Maybe she was losing her mind. Living in this house would certainly do it.



"I know you like me," Puddin' said. "I like you, too. Really. I always thought you were cute and smart and all. You're not like Boone. You're . . . well, a gentleman." She leaned closer to him, the valley between her breasts opening. Bourbon fumes rolled into his face. She whispered, "Take me with you when you leave here. Okay?"



When Rix paused, taken off guard, Puddin' plowed on: "Everybody hates me 'round here! Especially the dragon lady! That mother of yours has got eyes in the back of her head! She just looooves to tell lies about me! Katt's all hung up on bein' a model and a celebrity and all. Edwin and Cass watch me all the time. I cain't even drive alone to Asheville to go shoppin'!"



"I don't believe that."



"It's true, damn it! They won't let me out the front gate! See, I tried to run off in August. Had a gutful of this fuckin' place, and took off in the Maserati. They sent the cops after me, Rix! State trooper pulled me over right outside Asheville, hauled me to the jailhouse on a charge of car theft! Had to sit there all night till Boone came for me!" She scowled bitterly."He lied to me to get me to marry him. Said he was a world traveler, and a billionaire to boot. I didn't know I'd be a prisoner here, and that he didn't have one cent of his own to spend!"



"Boone's got his talent agency."



"Yeah. That." Puddin' laughed sharply. "It was paid for with old Walen's money. Boone's still payin' him back, with interest. Boone ain't got a pot to pee in!"



"He will be rich," Rix said. "After our father dies" - the realization sank in as he said it - "the family business will belong to Boone."



"Oh no. You're wrong. Boone wants it, but so does Katt. And Boone's scared shitless the old man's gonna hand everything over to her, lock, stock, and fuckin' barrel!"



Rix pondered that for a moment. All the Usher children had attended the Harvard School of Business, with a stipulation that they return to Usherland every weekend. Boone had flunked out after a year, Rix had quit to study English Lit at the University of North Carolina, but Kattrina had graduated with honors. She'd always been interested in fashion and modeling, and had opened her own agency in New York when she was twenty-two. After a couple of years, she'd sold the agency for a profit of almost three million dollars; then she'd decided to free-lance for herself, at the rate of two thousand dollars an hour. Her golden, healthy look was enormously popular in Europe, where her face sold everything from fur coats to Ferraris.



"Katt's happy," Rix said. "She's not interested in the business."



"Boone knows she wants it. He says your daddy's been talkin' to her in secret. That's why old Walen's never let Boone handle any of the decisions."



"That doesn't mean anything. He's never let any of us handle decisions." He smiled. "So Boone's champing at the bit, is he?"



"Sure. Just like you are."



"Sorry. I don't want a damned thing to do with it."



"That ain't what Boone says. He says you're pretendin' not to be interested. He says you're waitin' for the old man to die, just like everybody else. Know what Boone told me when we got married?" She blinked her heavy lids. "He said the business was worth about ten billion dollars, and that every time somebody even thinks there's gonna be a war, the millions come rollin' into those factories by the truckload. He says that's because nobody in the world, not even the Germans, makes weapons better than the Ushers. Now you look me straight in the eye and say you don't want a piece!"



"I don't," he said firmly, "want a piece."



"Bullshit." Her breasts were about to spill from her gown, the nipples peeking over like brown, crosseyed eyeballs. "Only a goddamn idjit wouldn't want a cut of ten billion bucks! That's all the money in the world! Look, I know you protested V'etnam when you was in college, but you ain't a hippie no more. You're a grown man." Her voice trailed off, and for a moment she appeared to be about to keel over. Then she clutched his arm. "I cain't stand this place no more, Rix. It's creepy around here, 'specially at night. The wind blows so hard when it gets dark. Boone goes off and leaves me alone. Now, with the old man in that room right over my head . . . I cain't stand the smell of him, Rix! I want to be with people who like me!"



"Have you tried talking to Boone about - "



"Yes, I've tried," Puddin' snapped, her face reddening. "He don't listen! He just laughs! Boone . . . don't want to be around me no more." Tears came to her eyes, but Rix couldn't tell whether she was forcing them or not. "He says he . . . cain't go to bed with me. Me! Head majorette at Daniel Webster High School! A beauty contest winner! Hell, I used to have football players wantin' to just sniff my panties! Boone's got a cock like a wet noodle!"



It took a moment for that to sink in. "Boone's . . . impotent?" Rix asked. The last time he'd been home, Boone had taken him to a club called the Rooster Strut, where topless dancers gyrated in the harsh, hot lights and the beer tasted like dishwater. Boone had made a big show of calling all the girls by their first names, of bragging about how many he'd laid. He remembered the way Boone had grinned, his teeth flashing in the strobe lights.



"You like me, don't you?" She wiped one eye and left a trail of mascara. "I could go to Atlanta with you. They'd let you take me, they wouldn't try to stop you. Boone's scared of you. He told me so. I'd be real good for you, Rix. You need a woman, and I wouldn't be like that last one you had. I wouldn't get crazy and cut my - "



"Go back to your room," he said. He'd been jolted by the memory of Sandra in the bathtub, and all that blood. The razor on the scarlet tiles. Blood on the walls. Her curly, ash-blond hair floating



Puddin' popped her breasts out of the gown. They hung inches away from his face. "Take 'em," she whispered huskily. "You can, if you want to." She tried to guide his hands.



He made a fist. "No," he said, and knew he was the biggest fool who'd ever lived.



"Just touch one. Just one."



"No."



In an instant her face crumbled like wet cardboard. Her lower lip swelled. "I . . . thought you liked me."



"I do, but you're my brother's wife."



"Are you queer?" There was a nasty hint in her voice.



"I'm not gay, no. But you and Boone have a problem. I'm not getting in the middle of it."



Her eyes narrowed into slits. Her mask of perfection fell off, and the real Puddin' was hiding behind it. "You're just like the rest of 'em! You don't care 'bout nobody but your own damn self!" She stood up, tugging drunkenly at her gown. "Oh, you play so high and mighty, but you're just another goddamned Usher, through and through!"



"Keep your voice down." Walen might sure as hell be getting a kick out of this!



"I'll shout if I want to!" Still, she wasn't drunk enough to want to rouse Margaret Usher. She marched to the door, then turned back. "Thanks for your help, Mr. Usher! I sure do appreciate it!" She left the room in a proud fury, but the door closed with a bump instead of a slam.



Rix lay back in the bed and grinned. So all of Boone's sexual crowing was just hot air! What a laugh! Boone's afraid of me? he thought. No way!



But he will be, before I'm through with him.



Ten billion dollars, he mused, as sleep began to pull at him again. With that much money, a man could do anything he pleased. He could have undreamed-of power. There'd be no more struggling at the typewriter, alternately playing God and Satan over paper characters.



- no more hassles no more books no more agents' dirty looks -



The strange singsong had come unbidden, a soft, seductive voice from the deepest recess of his mind. For an instant he was lulled by it, and he pictured himself stepping out of the limousine and striding toward the open doors of the armaments plant. Inside, military men, beautiful secretaries, and smiling sycophants were waiting to welcome him.



No, he thought - and the image faded. No. Every cent of that money was tainted with blood. He would make his own way in the world, on his own strengths. He didn't need any blood money.



But when he switched off the lamp and settled back to sleep, his last conscious thought was



- ten billion dollars -



An hour or so later, Puddin' was awakened from an uneasy sleep by the noise of rushing wind around the Gatehouse. She looked toward the door - and saw a shape interrupt the light that crept in from the corridor. She held her breath, waiting. The shape paused, then went on. Puddin' clutched her silk sheet; for some reason, she dared not open that door to see who walked the Gatehouse at this dead hour. She could smell Walen's stink in the room.



Puddin' squeezed her eyes shut, and, as she drifted toward darkness, she called in a hoarse whisper for her momma.