Doppelganger

chapter THREE

For the next couple of weeks, I rode the trains, bumming my way across the country. It wasn’t bad. I saw some pretty interesting places. Eventually the mountains shrank to a tiny row of bumps on the horizon, and I crossed the plains and saw fields of wheat ready for harvest, rolling out from the tracks like golden sheets of silk. Then the plains ended and the land turned green and hilly, dotted with farms and the occasional town.

Every few days I’d hop off the train and head into a new town. It took me a while to work up the courage the first time. I had to keep reminding myself who I was—or rather, who I looked like. Though I felt bad about what I’d done to the old man, it was nice to walk out in the open and pass people on the street. ’Course, looking the way I did, they still gave me nasty glances, but at least they didn’t run away in horror or try to capture me.

It’s funny—some of them actually helped me. I was sitting near a street corner the afternoon of my first excursion, back against a building, just watching people go by and minding my own business, when someone dropped a dollar at my feet. I remember picking it up and looking at it sort of confused. I almost jumped up and ran after the guy to return it. But then another person did the same thing, and some others threw some coins down. Before long I had more than ten bucks. Then there were people who called me names and said all sorts of rotten things. One person did both—first he called me a filthy beggar, then he gave me a five-dollar bill. Humans can be strange.

After a while I had enough money to buy some food. I found a grocery store and stocked up on candy bars and cans of tuna. I even bought some beans. My mother always fixed me beans from a can, to the point where I swore I’d never eat beans again when I was on my own, but for some reason I missed them. Since the old man had nothing left for supplies after his friends had gotten through with him, I bought a new spoon, a can opener, and a lighter with the last of the money. Then I hit the road again, catching another train out of town.

And that’s how I ended up in Bakersville. It was the fourth town I stopped in, and as far as I could see, it looked like all the others—the same kind of main street with the same kinds of stores, parks, churches, same everything. It was a warm afternoon, and I was on the corner, doing my best to look down and out, which wasn’t too hard. I had the whole thing down to an art at this point and was raking in the dough, when these three guys wearing football jackets came by and stopped to check me out. The one on the left was short with curly brown hair. The name stitched on his jacket was Josh. The one on the right was taller and blond. His name was Steve. The kid in the middle had black hair combed back and a sharp nose. That was Chris. He was a good-looking guy—like the kind I used to see on soap operas—but there was an edge to him, as if there was a storm brewing behind his eyes. I sensed trouble.

“Hey, Chris,” Steve sneered, “since when do we have beggars in town?”

“Since never,” said Chris.

“Man, I can smell him from here,” Josh said.

“Spare some change?” I murmured, and held out my hand. I could see it was shaking a little.

“Get a job,” Chris snarled.

I’d seen jocks on TV before. These three didn’t seem much different from them, maybe a little meaner. But I knew they liked to joke around and give each other a hard time.

“Sure,” I said. “Just tell me where your mother lives and I’ll be right over.”

Looking back, I guess it was a stupid thing to say. But at the time, I was just trying to get along, maybe draw a laugh. Jocks are always talking about each other’s mothers.

It sort of worked—the other two laughed. Unfortunately, Chris didn’t.

“You stupid old bastard,” Chris snarled, and took a step toward me. Both his friends grabbed him by the arms and yanked him back.

“Forget it, Parker. Come on,” Josh said, nodding toward the corner.

Shaking his friends off, Chris scowled at me for a second. Then he glanced both ways down the sidewalk and, seeing no one nearby, turned back and spit on me.It hit me on the arm. I looked down at it and did nothing. But as my heart started to pound, I could feel a little prickle along the back of my neck where the hairs were standing up.

As they walked away, Chris looked back and glared, then the three turned the corner. I was glad to see them go.I forgot all about Chris and his pals until they showed up later that night. I’d made my way out of town to a deserted meadow off the tracks. I had a little fire going and was trying to enjoy my beans. But it was hard—I was starting to feel a bit at odds with my form, sort of itchy and a bit ragged around the edges. I mean, it wasn’t horrible or anything, but it just depressed me because I had no idea how much time I had before it would get too uncomfortable to bear. And when it did, I’d be right back where I started.

I was in the middle of eating when I heard their voices on the tracks. I glanced up and saw them coming out of the dark. I knew who they were right off—their jackets gave them away.

“Well, look who it is,” Steve shouted.

“So this is where bums go at night,” Josh pitched in.

Chris didn’t say anything. He just smiled when he saw me. As they drew in toward the light, I could see he was carrying a bottle. It looked just like the one the old man had owned and was just as empty. Between the bottle and their weaving, I knew I was in for a rough time. I thought about making a run for it, but I figured I didn’t have a chance outrunning the three of them.

They walked up to the fire and surrounded me. For a minute they didn’t say anything. I could see the other two looking over at Chris. It was like they were trying to decide what to do. Whatever it was, I was sure it involved kicking my ass.

“You guys want some beans?” I asked, and held out the can with the spoon in it. I wasn’t sure if being friendly would work, but I didn’t know what else to say.

Chris kicked the can out my hand. So much for that, I thought.

“Shut up,” he said. “Don’t talk.”

Steve threw the rest of the wood I’d gathered on the fire. The clearing darkened. Then Chris poured what was left in the bottle onto the fire. There was a whoosh! as the flames leaped up, and for a moment everyone froze, squinting at the light.

“Hey, what are you doing!” Josh hollered. “What a waste.”

“Shut up,” Chris snarled back.

“I’ll buy you some more if you want,” I offered, rubbing my hand.

“I can get it whenever I want,” Chris said, whirling around to face me. “And I told you to shut up.”

He chucked the bottle. I saw it spinning at my head and turned so that it merely glanced off my shoulder. They all laughed.

I shrank into myself as they closed in, but a part of me was starting to get pissed off. I could feel my heart begin pounding the way it had back in town when Chris had spit on me. Still, I didn’t want any trouble. I just wanted them to go away.

“Why are you doing this?” I said, looking up into each of their faces. “I’m nobody.”“That’s right,” Chris said. “You are nobody. A useless piece of shit. So who cares?”

He pushed me backward, then gave me a kick. I rolled over onto my stomach. Then Steve joined in, and pretty soon the two were taking turns kicking me while Josh stood back and watched. I tried crawling away, tried pleading with them to stop, but they just hollered and laughed and kept on going. It didn’t really hurt that much, at least not at first. But toward the end, they started kicking harder. Then came the big blow.

I remember seeing Chris come at me with the bottle, but before I could react, Steve nailed me in the side with a good one and I got distracted. The next thing I knew, I felt a shock and heard the sound of breaking glass. I collapsed and sort of went limp for a moment, trying to remember where I was and what was going on. Finally I managed to open my eyes a crack and saw the fire burning, and it all came back to me.

“Dude, you killed him,” Josh said. He sounded scared.

“No, look. He’s still breathing,” Steve said, but he sounded just as scared.

“Hardheaded bastard,” I heard Chris say.

“Good thing,” Steve said. “Come on, let’s get back to the car.”

“Yeah, I’m bored,” Josh said. “Let’s go, Parker. It’s getting late.”

“What are you talking about?” Chris said. “We’re just getting started.”

“Funny,” Josh said. “I’m out of here. Coming?”

“Yeah,” I heard Steve say.

“Don’t be a p-ssy, Josh.”“Screw you, Chris,” Josh said. “You’re whacked.”

Chris laughed. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll catch up with you guys in a few minutes.”

I turned to watch Steve and Josh head back toward the tracks. A minute later they disappeared into the darkness. Chris and I were alone.

I managed to push myself back up. I was feeling a bit spinny and there was a pretty good lump rising on the back of my head, but nothing seemed broken. As for Chris, he just sort of paced back and forth in front of me, glaring.

“You got what you came for,” I gasped. “Go back with your friends and leave me alone.”

“Take it back,” he said.

“Take what back?”

“What you said today. About my mother.”

It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about. “All right,” I said. “I take it back. I’m sorry.”

I figured maybe now he’d go, but he just started pacing faster and breathing sort of funny, like he was huffing through his cheeks or something. It kind of creeped me out.

“No, really,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.”

He crouched down and stared into the fire. He wouldn’t look at me. It seemed like he was calming down, like maybe I could talk to him.

“You’re right about not talking about someone’s mother,” I said. “I just wasn’t thinking. If you knew my mother, you’d probably understand,” I tried joking. “You close to your mother?”

“Not really,” he muttered.

“Or maybe your father?” I offered. “I never knew my father.”He stood up and loomed over me. “What the hell do you care? You don’t know the first thing about my family.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, raising my hands. His shoulders sank a bit as he turned away. “You know, you shouldn’t be so mean,” I said to him. “Maybe people would like you better.”

“People like me,” he snapped. “Everyone likes me.”

I found that hard to believe, but I wasn’t about to argue with him. “Then what are you so pissed off about?” I asked.

He bent down and picked up a shard of glass from the broken bottle, almost losing his balance as he stood back up. “Because the world’s a crappy place,” he said, looking down at the shard.

He kept on going, his voice rising. “A crappy place, filled with crappy people like you.”

I could tell he was getting pretty hot, but I wasn’t in the mood to try to soothe him anymore. My head was really starting to pound, and all his talk just made it beat harder.

“And what about you?” I said, pulling myself to my feet. “I’d include you in that category.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said, advancing on me. I could see the hate returning in his eyes, only this time it wasn’t for me. But as I watched his fists clench, I wondered if it even mattered. “I’m as crappy as they come. The worst.”

“Why?” I said. “Is that what you want?”

“What I want?” he asked, his face crinkling in disbelief. “What does that have to do with anything?”

He tossed the shard aside and stepped up to me, so that I could smell the whiskey on his breath. My stomach churned as I thought of the old man again. I pictured him right there before me, gasping out his last moments. His final word echoing in my head.

“Mercy.”

I must have said it out loud. There was a brief look of shock on Chris’s face. Then the storm in those eyes erupted. It was as if it enraged him that I dared make such a request, that I dared ask for something like that from him. Without a word he hauled off and punched me in the face, and suddenly I was falling back again. I had barely hit the ground when he jumped on top of me and began punching me over and over again, screaming.

Just like back in the boxcar, everything became a blur. I remember the blows—heavy, with a viciousness the previous beating had lacked. I remember just wanting him to stop, and trying to tell him so through the pain. Then something in me snapped. I grabbed his falling fist with one hand, his throat with the other, and the next thing I knew, we’d flipped over and I was on top of him. The old, withered flesh of my arms started to ripple and melt away as I squeezed harder and harder, with both hands on his throat, no longer a weak old man. His eyes widened as the shell of my adopted form fell away for good—a look of incomprehension that slipped into pure, unadulterated fear, then slipped further, at last, into nothing.

When it was over, I rolled off him onto my back and just lay there next to him, panting.

The fire had died down some, and the dark had crept in closer by the time I sat up. Seeing Chris staring at the sky with his mouth still open, I could feel my heart start to pound all over again. That same sweet sickness as before filled me, and my stomach heaved.



“You idiot,” I muttered, staring down at him. “You stupid idiot.”

I just kept saying it over and over again, every time I looked at him. For the first time in years, I wanted to cry. But I didn’t. I guess doppelgangers don’t have the ducts for it.

I looked down at my body. There it was—the familiar gray skin, the floppy feet. I’d lost Loamer for good.

Kneeling down beside Chris, I knew what I had to do, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Once again my mother’s voice sounded in my head. “Well, for God’s sake, don’t waste him. Make a go of it this time. You’ve already got the hard part out of the way. Just follow through for once.”

“But I’m not ready,” I said. “I haven’t had any preparation. I don’t even know where he lives.” But I knew she was right. It would be a waste.

I placed my hand on his chest. A moment later it was done. The pain wasn’t bad this time—I hardly felt anything. Drawing back, I marveled at the skin—firm, pink, the joints supple. It felt good to take on someone my own age.

I removed his clothing and dressed as quickly as I could in the cold. Pulling his wallet from the pocket of his jeans, I opened it and looked inside at his driver’s license. His face—now mine—stared back at me with a smile. It looked so different from the cold visage next to me. I covered the picture with my thumb and focused on the information. There it was—his name, date of birth, height, weight, eye color, sex, and, most importantly, his address—all the details of his life squeezed onto a two-by-three-inch piece of plastic. There wasn’t much else in the wallet—a few dollars, a fake ID, some random cards.

And then I found her, tucked into a back fold. I pulled the picture out and held it up to the light. She was a little scuffed, but I could still make out the ringlets of red hair and the eyes that sparkled even in the worn photo. I had seen plenty of beautiful women on TV, but never anyone so beautiful in quite this way. I flipped the picture over and saw—written in smudged round letters—“Amber.”

I stuck the picture back in the fold, slipped the wallet in my jacket pocket, and stood up.

I knew I had to get rid of the body. Mother always told me it was one of the most important parts. I didn’t have the time or tools to bury him right now, so I’d have to stash him somewhere where nobody would find him. This is why it helps to prepare ahead of time, but once again I’d messed up. Of course, it’s easier to hide someone when no one else knows they’re supposed to be looking for him. Still, I didn’t want to just dump Chris in the woods—who knew what might get after him. Suddenly I got an idea.

I jogged over to the tracks and walked along the bank, and pretty soon I found what I was looking for. The culvert—a corrugated drainpipe running under the tracks—was less than three feet in diameter. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do.

I went back to my pack and pulled out a rolled-up sheet of plastic that I’d found last week in an empty boxcar. I had been using it as a groundsheet to keep the moisture out as I slept. It had worked pretty well, but I wouldn’t need it anymore.

The hardest part was getting him to the culvert. His license said 175 pounds, but he felt a lot heavier than that. I carried him over my shoulder at first, but then it got to be too much, so I just put him down and dragged him the rest of the way over grass already soaked with dew. It seemed to take forever, and I kept waiting for Josh and Steve to show up, wondering where their buddy was. Finally I got him over there, laid him out, and wrapped him up. After I finished, I just looked down at him for a minute. I couldn’t really see him through the plastic, but I knew the expression on his face hadn’t changed.

“Sorry things turned out this way,” I said, standing over him beneath the cold stars. I felt like I should say something, like I should try and reassure him.

“I’ll try not to screw it up too bad.”

I was worn out after hauling him all that way, but I managed to get him stuffed in there pretty well. I put him in headfirst and pushed and pushed until he was out of sight.

Then I said good-bye one last time, climbed up onto the tracks, and headed for town.

Steve and Josh were waiting about a half mile away where the tracks passed an empty lot. I took a few deep breaths and walked up to them.

“Hey, guys,” I said. They jumped at the sound of my voice. They’d been talking and hadn’t seen me.

“Christ, you scared the crap out of me,” Steve said.

“Good thing you showed up,” Josh added. “We were just about to leave your sorry ass.”

“How’s the old man?” Steve asked.

“He’s gone,” I muttered.

“Got rid of him, huh?” Josh said.

“Well…,” I said.

“I don’t want to know,” Josh said, holding up his hands and laughing nervously.“Let’s get out of here,” Steve said. We left the tracks and headed down to Steve’s car, a beat-up Ford Escort parked in the corner of the lot. I sat in the backseat as we drove off, not saying much of anything. Not that it would have mattered—with the music thudding from the zillion speakers Steve had in his car, they probably wouldn’t have been able to hear me anyway. A little while later, they pulled over in front of a house partway down a crowded street. The lights were out in all the houses. A street lamp cast the only glow around. Josh clicked off the stereo, and the car suddenly went silent and still.

“Here you go, pal,” Steve said, glancing up to look at me in his rearview mirror. “Try not to look too hung over tomorrow. We’ve got a big practice.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding, “big practice.”

I got out of the car. As I was heading across the lawn toward the house, Steve rolled down the window and called out, “Need a ride in the morning?”

That’s right. School.

“No thanks,” I said. At this point I didn’t see myself making it to school. Not tomorrow, anyway.

“All right. Later.”

I watched them speed off, then turned and looked things over. A bike was lying on the scraggly lawn in front of me, the grass growing up between the spokes of its wheels. The house was a single-story ranch. Even in the semidarkness, I could tell it looked sort of run down.

Chris Parker, I said to myself, welcome to your life.