The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “Pull to the goddamn bank!” the warden yelled. “Right now!”

  Scowling, Kent leaned and spat. He laid his .30-30 aside. Using the shoulders of his brothers for balance, he made his way to the prow. Scott, flecked with dog blood, moved to the back to keep the boat level. At the front, Kent reached into the water and took the first dog by its collar, lifted the kicking form, and set it streaming and shivering behind him. His brothers turned their faces away as it shook off the water, rocking the whole boat. Kent grabbed the rope that led to the big three-legged hound and pulled it in hand over hand until he could work his fingers under its collar. He gave Wayne a sidelong look and together they hauled it in. Then Kent grabbed for the smaller bitch while Wayne got the black and tan.

  The warden watched them, his hips swaying with the rise and fall of the current. Rain fell harder now, spattering against the aluminum boats. Kneeling among the dogs, Kent unsnapped the leash and tossed the spotted hound overboard. It sank, then resurfaced and floated on its side, trailing blood. Kent’s lower lip twitched. Wayne whispered to the dogs and placed his hands on two of their heads to calm them—they were retching and trembling and rolling their eyes fearfully at the trees.

  Scott stood up with his hands raised, as if to surrender. When the man looked at him, Kent jumped from his crouch into the other boat, his big fingers closing around the game warden’s neck.

  Later that morning, Kirxy had just unlocked the door and hung out the OPEN sign when he heard the familiar rattle of the Gates truck. He sipped his coffee and limped behind the counter, sat on his stool. The boys came several times a week, usually in the afternoon, before they started their evenings of hunting and fishing. Kirxy would give them the supplies they needed—bullets, fishing line, socks, a new cap to replace one lost in the river. They would fill their truck and cans with gas. Eighteen-year-old Wayne would get the car battery from the charger near the wood-burning stove and replace it with the drained one from their boat’s trolling motor. Kirxy would serve them coffee or Cokes—never liquor, not to minors—and they’d eat whatever they chose from the shelves, usually candy bars or potato chips, ignoring Kirxy’s advice that they ought to eat healthier: Vienna sausages, Dinty Moore, or Chef Boyardee.

  Today they came in looking a little spooked, Kirxy thought. Scott stayed near the door, peering out, the glass fogging by his face. Wayne went to the candy aisle and selected several Hershey bars. He left a trail of muddy boot prints behind him. Kirxy would mop later.

  “Morning, boys,” he said. “Coffee?”

  Wayne nodded. Kirxy filled a styrofoam cup, then grinned as the boy loaded it with sugar.

  “You take coffee with your sweet’ner?” he said.

  Kent leaned on the counter, inspecting the hardware items on their pegs, a hacksaw, a set of Allen wrenches. A gizmo with several uses, knife, measuring tape, awl. Kirxy could smell the booze on the boys.

  “Y’all need something?” he asked.

  “That spotted one you give us?” Kent said. “Won’t bark no more.”

  “She won’t?”

  “Naw. Tree ’em fine, but won’t bark nary a time. Gonna have to shoot her, I expect.”

  His mouth full of chocolate, Wayne looked at Kirxy. By the door, Scott unfolded his arms. He kept looking outside.

  “No,” Kirxy said. “Ain’t no need to shoot her, Kent. Do what that conjure woman recommends. Go out in the woods, find you a locust shell stuck to a tree. This is the time of year for ’em, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Locust shell?” Kent asked.

  “Yeah. Bring it back home and crunch it up in the dog’s scraps, and that’ll make her bark like she ought to.”

  Kent nodded to Kirxy and walked to the door. He went out, his brothers following.

  “See you,” Kirxy called.

  Wayne waved with a Hershey bar and closed the door.

  Kirxy stared after them for a time. It had been a year since they’d paid him anything, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask for money; he’d even stopped writing down what they owed.

  He got his coffee and limped from behind the counter to the easy chair by the stove. He shook his head at the muddy footprints on the candy aisle. He sat slowly, tucked a blanket around his legs, took out his bottle and added a splash to his coffee. Sipping, he picked up a novel—Louis L’Amour, Sackett’s Land—and reached in his apron pocket for his glasses.

  Though she had been once, the woman named Esther wasn’t much of a regular in Kirxy’s store these days. She lived two miles upriver in a shambling white house with magnolia trees in the yard. The house had a wraparound porch, and when it flooded you could fish from the back, sitting in the tall white rocking chairs, though you weren’t likely to catch anything. A baby alligator maybe, or sometimes bullfrogs. Owls nested in the trees along her part of the river, but in this weather they seemed quiet; she missed their hollow calling.

  Esther was fifty. She’d had two husbands and six children who were gone and had ill feelings toward her. She’d had her female parts removed in an operation. Now she lived alone and, most of the time, drank alone. If the Gates boys hadn’t passed out in their truck somewhere in the woods, they might stop by after a night’s work. Esther would make them strong coffee and feed them salty fried eggs and greasy link sausages, and some mornings, like today, she would get a faraway look in her eyes and take Kent’s shirt collar in her fingers and lead him upstairs and watch him close the bathroom door and listen to the sounds of his bathing.

  She smiled, knowing these were the only baths he ever took.

  When he emerged, his long hair stringy, his chest flat and hard, she led him down the hall past the telephone nook to her bedroom. He crawled into bed and watched her take off her gown and step out of her underwear. Bending, she looked in the mirror to fluff her hair, then climbed in beside him. He was gentle at first, curious, then rougher, the way she liked him to be. She closed her eyes, the bed frame rattling and bumping, her father’s old pocket watch slipping off the nightstand. Water gurgled in the pipework in the walls as the younger brothers took baths, too, hoping for a turn of their own, which had never happened. At least not yet.

  “Slow, baby,” Esther whispered in Kent’s ear. “It’s plenty of time . . .”

  On April third it was still raining. Kirxy put aside his crossword to answer the telephone.

  “Can you come on down to the lock and dam?” Goodloe asked. “We got us a situation here.”

  Kirxy disliked smart-assed Goodloe, but something in the sheriff’s voice told him it was serious. On the news, he’d heard that the new game warden had been missing for two days. The authorities had dragged the river all night and had three helicopters in the air. Kirxy sat forward in his chair, waiting for his back to loosen a bit. He added a shot of whiskey to his coffee and gulped it down as he shrugged into his denim jacket, zipping it up to his neck because he stayed cold when it rained. He put cotton balls in his ears and set his cap on his bald head, took his walking cane from beside the door.

  In his truck, the four-wheel-drive engaged and the defroster on high, he sank and rose in the deep ruts, gobs of mud flying past his windows, the wipers swishing across his view. The radio announcer said it was sixty degrees, more rain on the way. Conway Twitty began to sing. A mile from the lock and dam Kirxy passed the Grove Hill ambulance, axle-deep in mud. A burly black paramedic wedged a piece of two-by-four beneath one of the rear tires while the bored-looking driver sat behind the wheel, smoking and racing the engine.

  Kirxy slowed and rolled down his window. “Y’all going after a live one or a dead one?”

  “Dead, Mr. Kirxy,” the black man answered.

  Kirxy nodded and sped up. At the lock and dam, he could see a crowd of people and umbrellas and beyond them he saw the dead man, lying on the ground under a black raincoat. Some onlooker had begun to direct traffic. Goodloe and three deputies in yellow slickers stood near the body with their hands in their pockets.

  Kirxy climbed out and people
nodded somberly and parted to let him through. Goodloe, who’d been talking to his deputies, ceased as Kirxy approached and they stood looking at the raincoat.

  “Morning, Sugarbaby,” Kirxy said, using the childhood nickname Goodloe hated. “Is this who I think it is?”

  “Yep,” Goodloe muttered. “Rookie game warden of the year.”

  With his cane, Kirxy pulled back the raincoat to reveal the white face. “Young fellow,” he said.

  There was a puddle beneath the dead man. Twigs in his hair and a clove of moss in his breast pocket. With the rubber tip of his cane, Kirxy brushed a leech from the man’s forehead. He bent and looked into the warden’s left eye, which was partly open. He noticed his throat, the dark bruises there.

  Goodloe unfolded a handkerchief and blew his nose, then wiped it. “Don’t go abusing the evidence, Kirxy.” He stuffed the handkerchief into his back pocket.

  “Evidence? Now, Sugarbaby.”

  Goodloe exhaled and looked at the sky. “Don’t shit me, Kirxy. You know good and well who done this. I expect they figure the law don’t apply up here on this part of the river, the way things is been all these years. Them other wardens scared of ’em. But I reckon that’s fixing to change.” He paused. “I had to place me a call to the capital this morning. To let ’em know we was all outa game wardens. And you won’t believe who they patched me through to.”

  Kirxy adjusted the cotton in his right ear.

  “Old Frank David himself,” the sheriff said. “Ain’t nothing ticks him off more than this kind of thing.”

  A dread stirred in Kirxy’s belly. “Frank David. Was he a relation of this fellow?”

  “Teacher,” Goodloe said. “Said he’s been giving lessons to young game wardens over at the forestry service. He asked me a whole bunch of questions. Regular interrogation. Said this here young fellow was the cream of the crop. Best new game warden there was.”

  “Wouldn’t know it from this angle,” Kirxy said.

  Goodloe grunted.

  A photographer from the paper was studying the corpse. He glanced at the sky as if gauging the light. When he snapped the first picture, Kirxy was in it, like a sportsman.

  “What’d you want from me?” he asked Goodloe.

  “You tell them boys I need to ask ’em some questions, and I ain’t fixing to traipse all over the county. I’ll drop by the store this evening.”

  “If they’re there, they’re there,” Kirxy said. “I ain’t their damn father.”

  Goodloe followed him to the truck. “You might think of getting ’em a lawyer,” he said through the window.

  Kirxy started the engine. “Shit, Sugarbaby. Them boys don’t need a lawyer. They just need to stay in the woods, where they belong. Folks oughta know to let ’em alone by now.”

  Goodloe stepped back from the truck. He smacked his lips. “I don’t reckon anybody got around to telling that to the deceased.”

  Driving, Kirxy turned off the radio. He remembered the Gates brothers when they were younger, before their father shot himself. He pictured the three blond heads in the front of Boo’s boat as he motored upriver past the store, lifting a solemn hand to Kirxy where he stood with a broom on his little back porch. After Boo’s wife and newborn daughter had died, he’d taught those boys all he knew about the woods, about fishing, tracking, hunting, killing. He kept them in his boat all night as he telephoned catfish and checked his trotlines and jugs and shot things on the bank. He’d given each of his sons a specific job to do, one dialing the rotary phone, another netting the stunned catfish, the third adjusting the chains which generated electricity from a car battery into the water. Boo would tie a piece of clothesline around each of his sons’ waists and loop the other end to his own ankle in case one of the boys fell overboard. Downriver, Kent would pull in the trotlines while Wayne handed him a cricket or cockroach or catalpa worm for the hook. Scott took the bass, perch, or catfish Kent gave him and slit its soft cold belly with a fillet knife and ran two fingers up into the fish and drew out its palmful of guts and dumped them overboard. Sometimes on warm nights cottonmouths or young alligators would follow them, drawn by blood. A danger was catching a snake or snapping turtle on the trotline, and each night Boo whispered for Kent to be careful, to lift the line with a stick and see what he had there instead of using his bare hand.

  During the morning they would leave the boat tied and the boys would follow their father through the trees from trap to trap, stepping when he stepped, not talking. Boo emptied the traps and rebaited them while behind him Kent put the carcass in his squirrel pouch. In the afternoons, they gutted and skinned what they’d brought home. What time was left before dark they spent sleeping in the feather bed in the cabin where their mother and sister had died.

  After Boo’s suicide, Kirxy had tried to look after the boys, their ages twelve, thirteen, and fourteen—just old enough, Boo must’ve thought, to raise themselves. For a while Kirxy let them stay with him and his wife, who’d never had a child. He tried to send them to school, but they were past learning to read and write and got expelled the first day for fighting, ganging up on a black kid. They were past the kind of life Kirxy’s wife was used to living. They scared her, the way they watched her with eyes narrowed into black lines, the way they ate with their hands. The way they wouldn’t talk. What she didn’t know was that from those years of wordless nights on the river and silent days in the woods they had developed a kind of language of their own, a language of the eyes, of the fingers, of the way a shoulder moved, a nod of the head.

  Because his wife’s health wasn’t good in those days, Kirxy had returned the boys to their cabin in the woods. He spent most Saturdays with them, trying to take up where Boo had left off, bringing them food and milk, clothes and new shoes, reading them books, teaching them things and telling stories. He’d worked out a deal with Esther, who took hot food to them in the evenings and washed and mended their clothes.

  Slowing to let two buzzards hop away from a dead deer, Kirxy lit a cigarette and wiped his foggy windshield with the back of his hand. He thought of Frank David, Alabama’s legendary game warden. There were dozens of stories about the man—Kirxy had heard and told them for years, had repeated them to the Gates boys, even made some up to scare them. Now the true ones and the fictions were confused in his mind. He remembered one: A dark, moonless night, and two poachers use a spotlight to freeze a buck in the darkness and shoot it. They take hold of its wide rack of horns and struggle to drag the big deer when suddenly they realize that now three men are pulling. The first poacher jumps and says, “Hey, it ain’t supposed to be but two of us dragging this deer!”

  And Frank David says, “Ain’t supposed to be none of y’all dragging it.”

  The Gates boys came in the store just before closing, smelling like the river. Nodding to Kirxy, they went to the shelves and began selecting cans of things to eat. Kirxy poured himself a generous shot of whiskey. He’d stopped by their cabin earlier and, not finding them there, left a quarter on the steps. An old signal he hadn’t used in years.

  “Goodloe’s coming by tonight,” he said to Kent. “Wants to ask if y’all know anything about that dead game warden.”

  Kent shot the other boys a look.

  “Now I don’t know if y’all’ve ever even seen that fellow,” Kirxy said, “and I’m not asking you to tell me.” He paused, in case they wanted to. “But that’s what old Sugarbaby’s gonna want to know. If I was y’all, I just wouldn’t tell him anything. Just say I was at home, that I don’t know nothing about any dead game warden. Nothing at all.”

  Kent shrugged and walked down the aisle he was on and stared out the back window, though there wasn’t anything to see except the trees, ghostly and bent, when the lightning came. His brothers took seats by the stove and began to eat. Kirxy watched them, remembering when he used to read to them, Tarzan of the Apes and The Return of Tarzan. The boys had wanted to hear the books over and over—they loved the jungle, the elephants, rhinos, gorillas, the ana
condas thirty feet long. They would listen intently, their eyes bright in the light of the stove, Wayne holding in his small dirty hand the Slinky Kirxy had given him as a Christmas present, his lips moving along with Kirxy’s voice, mouthing some of the words: the great apes; Numa the lion; La, Queen of Opar, the Lost City.

  They had listened to his Frank David stories the same way: the game warden appearing beside a tree on a night when there wasn’t a moon, a tracker so keen he could see in the dark, could follow a man through the deepest swamp by smelling the fear in his sweat, by the way the water swirled; a bent-over shadow slipping between the beaver lairs, the cypress trees, the tangle of limb and vine, parting the long wet bangs of Spanish moss with his rifle barrel, creeping toward the glowing windows of the poacher’s cabin, the deer hides nailed to the wall. The gator pelts. The fish with their grim smiles hooked to a clothesline, turtle shells like army helmets drying on the windowsills. Any pit bull or mutt meant to guard the place lying with its throat slit behind him, Frank David slips out of the fog with fog still clinging to the brim of his hat. He circles the cabin, peers in each window, mounts the porch. Puts his shoulder through the front door. Stands with wood splinters landing on the floor at his feet. A hatted man of average height, clean-shaven: no threat until the big hands come up, curl into fists, the knuckles scarred, blue, sharp.

  Kirxy finished his drink and poured another. It burned pleasantly in his belly. He looked at the boys, occupied by their bags of corn curls. A Merle Haggard song ended on the radio and Kirxy clicked it off, not wanting the boys to hear the evening news.