The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories

by Otto Penzler

  At the truck, Wayne jumped in the driver’s seat and reached for the keys. Scott appeared in the window, shaking his head. When Wayne didn’t scoot over, the older boy hit him in the jaw, then slung open the door and pulled Wayne out, sent him rolling over the ground. Scott climbed in and had trouble getting the truck choked. By the time he had the hang of it, Wayne had gotten into the back and sat among the wet dogs, staring at his dead brother.

  At their cabin, they carried Kent into the woods. They laid him on the ground and began digging near where their sister, mother, and father were buried in their unmarked graves. For three hours they worked, the dogs coming from under the porch and sniffing around Kent and watching the digging, finally slinking off and crawling back under the porch, out of the rain. An hour later the dogs came boiling out again and stood in a group at the edge of the yard, baying. The boys paused but saw or heard nothing. When the dogs kept making noise, Scott got his rifle and fired into the woods several times. He nodded to his brother and they went back to digging. By the time they’d finished, it was late afternoon and the hole was full of slimy water and they were black with mud. They each took off one of Kent’s boots and Scott got the things from his pockets. They stripped off his shirt and pants and lowered him into the hole. When he bobbed to the top of the water, they got stones and weighted him down. Then shoveled mud into the grave.

  They showed up at Esther’s, black as tar.

  “Where’s Kent?” she asked, holding her robe closed at her throat.

  “We buried him,” Scott said, moving past her into the kitchen. She put a hand over her mouth, and as Scott told her what they’d found she slumped against the door, looking outside. An owl flew past in the floodlights. She thought of calling Kirxy but decided to wait until morning—the old bastard thought she was a slut and a corruption. For tonight she’d just keep them safe in her house.

  Scott went to the den. He turned on the TV, the reception bad because of the weather. Wayne, a bruise on his left cheek, climbed the stairs. He went into one of the bedrooms and closed the door behind him. It was chilly in the room and he noticed pictures of people on the wall, children, and a tall man and a younger woman he took to be Esther. She’d been pretty then. He stood dripping on the floor, looking into her black and white face, searching for signs of the woman he knew now. Soon the door opened behind him and she came in. And though he still wore his filthy wet clothes, she steered him to the bed and guided him down onto it. She unbuckled his belt, removed his hunting knife, and stripped the belt off. She unbuttoned his shirt and rubbed her fingers across his chest, the hair just beginning to thicken there. She undid his pants and ran the zipper down its track. She worked them over his thighs, knees, and ankles and draped them across the back of a chair. She pulled off his boots and socks. Pried a finger beneath the elastic of his underwear, felt that he’d already come.

  He looked at her face. His mouth opened. Esther touched his chin, the scratch of whiskers, his breath on her hand.

  “Hush now,” she said, and watched him fall asleep.

  Downstairs, the TV went off.

  When Goodloe knocked, Esther answered, a cold sliver of her face in the cracked door. “The hell you want?”

  “Good evening to you, too. The Gateses here?”

  “No.”

  Goodloe glanced behind him. “I believe that’s their truck. It’s kinda hard to mistake, especially for us trained lawmen.”

  She tried to close the door but Goodloe had his foot in it. He glanced at the three deputies who stood importantly by the Blazer. They dropped their cigarettes and crushed them out. They unsnapped their holsters and strode across the yard, standing behind Goodloe with their hands on their revolvers and their legs apart like TV deputies.

  “Why don’t y’all just let ’em alone?” Esther said. “Ain’t they been through enough?”

  “Tell ’em I’d like to see ’em,” Goodloe said. “Tell ’em get their boots.”

  “You just walk straight to hell, mister.”

  Wayne appeared behind her, naked, lines from the bed linen on his face.

  “Whoa, Nellie,” Goodloe said. “Boy, you look plumb terrible. Why don’t you let us carry you on down to the office for a little coffee? Little cake.” He glanced back at one of the deputies. “We got any of that cinnamon roll left, Dave?”

  “You got a warrant for their arrest?” Esther asked.

  “No, I ain’t got a warrant for their arrest. They ain’t under arrest. They fixing to get questioned, is all. Strictly informal.” Goodloe winked. “You reckon you could do without ’em for a couple of hours?”

  “Fuck you, Sugarbaby.”

  The door slammed. Goodloe nodded down the side of the house and two deputies went to make sure nobody escaped from the back. But in a minute Wayne came out dressed, his hands in his pockets, and followed Goodloe down the stairs, the deputies watching him closely, and watching the house.

  “Where’s your brothers?” Goodloe asked.

  He looked down.

  Goodloe nodded to the house and two deputies went in, guns drawn. They came out a few minutes later, frowning.

  “Must’ve heard us coming,” Goodloe said. “Well, we got this one. We’ll find them other two tomorrow.” They got into the Blazer and Goodloe looked at Wayne, sitting in the back.

  “Put them cuffs on him,” Goodloe said.

  Holding his rifle, Scott came out of the woods when the Blazer was gone. He returned to the house.

  “They got Wayne,” Esther said. “Why didn’t you come tell him they was out there?”

  “He got to learn,” Scott said. He went to the cabinet where she kept the whiskey and took the bottle. She watched him go to the sofa and sit down in front of the blank TV. Soon she joined him, bringing glasses. He filled both, and when they emptied them he filled them again.

  They spent the night like that, and at dawn they were drunk. Wearing her robe, Esther began clipping her fingernails, a cigarette smoking in the ashtray beside her. She’d forgotten about calling Kirxy.

  Scott was telling her about the biggest catfish they’d ever called up: 100 pounds, he swore, 150. “You could of put your whole head in that old cat’s mouth,” he said, sipping his whiskey. “Back fin long as your damn arm.”

  He stood. Walked to the front window. There were toads in the yard—with the river swelling they were everywhere. In the evenings there were rainfrogs. The yard had turned into a pond and each night the rainfrogs sang. It was like no other sound. Esther said it kept her up at night.

  “That, and some other things,” she said.

  Scott heard a fingernail ring the ashtray. He rubbed his hand across his chin, felt the whiskers there. He watched the toads as they huddled in the yard, still as rocks, bloated and miserable-looking.

  “That catfish was green,” Scott said, sipping. “I swear to God. Green as grass.”

  “Them goddamn rainfrogs,” she said. “I just lay there at night with my hands over my ears.”

  A clipping rang the ashtray.

  He turned and went to her on the sofa. “They was moss growing on his nose,” he said, putting his hand on her knee.

  “Go find your brother,” she said. She got up and walked unsteadily across the floor and went into the bathroom, closed the door. When she came out, he and the bottle were gone.

  Without Kent, Scott felt free to do what he wanted, which was to drive very fast. He got the truck started and spun off, aiming for every mud hole he could. He shot past a house with a washing machine on the front porch, two thin black men skinning a hog hanging from a tree. One of the men waved with a knife. Drinking, Scott drove through the mountains of trash at the dump and turned the truck in circles, kicking up muddy roostertails. He swerved past the Negro church and the graveyard where a group of blacks huddled, four warbling poles over an open grave, the wind tearing the preacher’s hat out of his hands and a woman’s umbrella reversing suddenly.

  When he tired of driving, he left the truck in their
hiding place, and using trees for balance, stumbled down the hill to their boat. He carried Kent’s rifle, which he’d always admired. On the river, he fired up the outboard and accelerated, the boat prow lifting and leveling out, the buzz of the motor rising in the trees. The water was nearly orange from mud, the cypress knees nothing but knobs and tips because of the floods. Nearing the old train trestle, he cut the motor and coasted to a stop. He sat listening to the rain, to the distant barking of a dog, half a mile away. Chasing something, maybe a deer. As the dog charged through the woods, Scott closed his eyes and imagined the terrain, marking where he thought the dog was now, and where he thought it was now. Then the barking stopped, suddenly, as if the dog had run smack into a tree.

  Scott clicked on the trolling motor and moved the boat close to the edge of the river, the rifle across his knees. He scanned the banks, and when the rain started to fall harder he accelerated toward the trestle. From beneath the crossties, he smelled creosote and watched the rain as it stirred the river. He looked into the gray trees and thought he would drive into town later, see about getting Wayne. Kent had never wanted to go to Grove Hill—their father had warned them of the police, of jail.

  Scott picked up one of the catfish from the night before. It was stiff, as if carved out of wood. He stared at it, watching the green blowflies hover above his fist, then threw it over into the cattails along the bank.

  The telephone rig lay under the seat. He lifted the chains quietly, considering what giant catfish might be passing beneath the boat this very second, a thing as large as a man’s thigh with eyes the size of ripe plums and skin the color of mud. Catfish, their father had taught them, have long whiskers that make them the only fish you can “call.” Kirxy had told Scott and his brothers that if a game warden caught you telephoning, all you needed to do was dump your rig overboard. But, Kirxy warned, Frank David would handcuff you and swim around the bottom of the river until he found your rig.

  Scott spat a stream of tobacco into the brown water. Minnows appeared and began to investigate, nibbling at the dark yolk of spit as it elongated and dissolved. With his rifle’s safety off, he lowered the chains into the water, a good distance apart. He checked the connections—the battery, the telephone. He lifted the phone and began to dial. “Hello?” he whispered, the thing his father had always said, grinning in the dark. The wind picked up a bit, he heard it rattling in the trees, and he dialed faster, had just seen the first silver body bob to the surface when something landed with a clatter in his boat. He glanced over.

  A bundle of dynamite, sparks shooting off the end, fuse already gone. He looked above him, the trestle, but nobody was there. He moved to grab the dynamite, but his cheeks ballooned with hot red wind and his hands caught fire.

  When the smoke cleared and the water stopped boiling, silver bodies began to bob to the surface—largemouth bass, bream, gar, suckers, white perch, polliwogs, catfish—some only stunned but others dead, in pieces, pink fruit-like things, the water blooming darkly with mud.

  Kirxy’s telephone rang for the second time in one day, a rarity that proved what his wife had always said: bad news came over the phone. The first call had been Esther, telling him of Kent’s death, Wayne’s arrest, Scott’s disappearance. This time Kirxy heard Goodloe’s voice telling him that somebody—or maybe a couple of somebodies—had been blown up out on the trestle.

  “Scott,” Kirxy said, sitting.

  He arrived at the trestle, and with his cane hobbled over the uneven tracks. Goodloe’s deputies and three ambulance drivers in rubber gloves and waders were scraping pieces off the crossties with spoons, dropping the parts in ziplock bags. The boat, two flattened shreds of aluminum, lay on the bank. In the water, minnows darted about, nibbling.

  “Christ,” Kirxy said. He brought a handkerchief to his lips. Then he went to where Goodloe stood on the bank, writing in his notebook.

  “What do you aim to do about this?” Kirxy demanded.

  “Try to figure out who it was, first.”

  “You know goddamn well who it was.”

  “I expect it’s either Kent or Scott Gates.”

  “It’s Scott,” Kirxy said.

  “How do you know that?”

  Kirxy told him that Kent was dead.

  “I ain’t seen the body,” Goodloe said.

  Kirxy’s blood pressure was going up. “Fuck, Sugarbaby. Are you one bit aware what’s going on here?”

  “Fishing accident,” Goodloe said. “His bait exploded.”

  From the bank, a deputy called that he’d found most of a boot. “Foot’s still in it,” he said, holding it up by the lace.

  “Tag it,” Goodloe said, writing something down. “Keep looking.”

  Kirxy poked Goodloe in the shoulder with his cane. “You really think Scott’d blow himself up?”

  Goodloe looked at his shoulder, the muddy cane print, then at the storekeeper. “Not on purpose, I don’t.” He paused. “Course, suicide does run in their family.”

  “What about Kent?”

  “What about him?”

  “Christ, Sugarbaby—”

  Goodloe held up his hand. “Just show me, Kirxy.”

  They left the ambulance drivers and the deputies and walked the other way without talking. When they came to Goodloe’s Blazer, they got in and drove without talking. Soon they stopped in front of the Gateses’ cabin. Instantly hounds surrounded the truck, barking viciously and jumping with muddy paws against the glass. Goodloe blew the horn until the hounds slunk away, heads low, fangs bared. The sheriff opened his window and fired several times in the air, backing the dogs up. When he and Kirxy got out, Goodloe had reloaded.

  The hounds kept to the edge of the woods, watching.

  His eye on them, Kirxy led Goodloe behind the decrepit cabin. Rusty screens covered some windows, rags of drape others. Beneath the house, the dogs paced them. “Back here,” Kirxy said, heading into the trees. Esther had said they’d buried Kent, and this was the logical place. He went slowly, careful not to bump a limb and cause a small downpour. Sure enough, there lay the grave. You could see where the dogs had been scratching around it.

  Goodloe went over and toed the dirt. “You know the cause of death?”

  “Yeah, I know the cause of death. His name’s Frank fucking David.”

  “I meant how he was killed.”

  “The boys said snakebite. Three times in the neck. But I’d do an autopsy.”

  “You would.” Goodloe exhaled. “OK. I’ll send Roy and Avery over here to dig him up. Maybe shoot these goddern dogs.”

  “I’ll tell you what you’d better do first. You better keep Wayne locked up safe.”

  “I can’t hold him much longer,” Goodloe said. “Unless he confesses.”

  Kirxy pushed him from behind, and at the edge of the woods the dogs tensed. Goodloe backed away, raising his pistol, the grave between them.

  “You crazy, Kirxy? You been locked in that store too long?”

  “Goodloe,” Kirxy gasped. The cotton in his left ear had come out and suddenly air was roaring through his head. “Even you can’t be this stupid. You let that boy out and he’s that cold-blooded fucker’s next target—”

  “Target, Kirxy? Shit. Ain’t nothing to prove anybody killed them damn boys? This one snakebit, you said so yourself. That other one blowing himself up. Them dern Gateses has fished with dynamite their whole life. You oughta know that—you the one gets it for ’em.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re about neck deep in this thing, you know. And I don’t mean just lying to protect them boys neither. I mean selling explosives illegally, to minors, Kirxy.”

  “I don’t give a shit if I am!” Kirxy yelled. “Two dead boys in two days and you’re worried about dynamite? You oughta be out there looking for Frank David.”

  “He ain’t supposed to be here for another week or two,” Goodloe said. “Paperwork—”

  He fired his pistol then. Kirxy jumped, but the sheriff was looking past him, and when Kirxy followed his eye
s he saw the dog that had been creeping in. It lay slumped in the mud, a hind leg kicking, blood coloring the water around it.

  Goodloe backed away, smoke curling from the barrel of his pistol.

  Around them the other dogs circled, heads low, moving sideways, the hair on their spines sticking up.

  “Let’s argue about this in the truck,” Goodloe said.

  At the store Kirxy put out the OPEN sign. He sat in his chair with his coffee and a cigarette. He’d read the same page three times when it occurred to him to phone Montgomery and get Frank David’s office on the line. It took a few calls, but he soon got the number and dialed. The snippy young woman who answered told Kirxy that yes, Mr. David was supposed to take over the Lower Peachtree district, but that he wasn’t starting until next week, she thought.

  Where was he now? Kirxy wanted to know.

  “Florida?” she said. “No, Louisiana. Fishing.” No sir, he couldn’t be reached. He preferred his vacations private.

  Kirxy slammed down the phone. He lit another cigarette and tried to think.

  It was just a matter, he decided, of keeping Wayne alive until Frank David took over the district. There were probably other game wardens who’d testify that Frank David was over in Louisiana fishing right now. But once the son of a bitch officially moved here, he’d have motive and his alibi wouldn’t be as strong. If Wayne turned up dead, Frank David would be the chief suspect.

  Kirxy inhaled smoke deeply and tried to imagine how Frank David would think. How he would act. The noise he would make or not make as he went through the woods. What he would say if you happened upon him. Or he upon you. What he would do if he came into the store. Certainly he wasn’t the creature Kirxy had created to scare the boys, not some wild ghostly thing. He was just a man who’d had a hard life and grown bitter and angry. Probably an alcoholic. A man who chose to uphold the law because breaking it was no challenge. A man with no obligation to any other men or a family. Just to himself and his job. To some goddamned game-warden code. His job was to protect the wild things the law had deemed worthy: dove, duck, owls, hawks, turkeys, alligators, squirrels, coons, and deer. But how did the Gates boys fall into the category of trash animal—wildcats or possums or armadillos, snapping turtles, snakes? Things you could kill any time, run over in your truck and not even look at in your mirror to see dying behind you? Christ. Why couldn’t Frank David see that he—more than a match for the boys—was of their breed?