Complicated Shadows

by James D F Hannah

  The kid cleared his throat. The old man looked back at him and shook his head.

  "Overlook my grandson," the old man said. "He's been to church, getting religion, and he don't approve much of Isaac's life." To the kid, he said, "Go on back inside, Jed."

  The kid curled his face up. "But Grandpa—"

  "Don't argue with me," the old man said.

  The kid nodded and mumbled something and spat hard in our direction, the glob of spit arcing well but dropping off early and landing a few feet shy of us, before walking back inside.

  "Need to have him checked for dehydration, he keeps spitting like that," I said.

  "Children, they always think they got all the answers?" Tennis McCoy said. "All their life is waiting for old guys like me to die so they move up and be next in line for whatever it is they're waiting on." He looked at Woody and me. "And who are you?"

  "I'm Henry Malone, and this is my friend Woody. We're friends of Pete."

  The old man took off his sunglasses. His eyes were small and set deep into his face. "Tennis McCoy, Isaac's father." He gestured toward Woody and me. "When you say you're 'friends,' you mean like Isaac and Pete?"

  "No. Pete and I used to be state troopers together."

  "You told my grandson you weren't cops."

  "We're not. We used to be cops. Pete's retired, and I'm no longer on the force." I suppose life's all about the verb tense.

  The old man walked towards Pete and threw his arms around him. Pete stood for a moment, unsure what to do, before pulling his arms loose and returning the embrace.

  The old man let cranked his head upward toward Pete. "Isaac loves you."

  Pete flickered a smile. "Thank you. Isaac doesn't talk about his family much."

  "I imagine he don't. I begrudge no man for following his own path."

  "Have you talked to Isaac?" I said. "Heard anything from him the past few days?"

  "Can't say I have," McCoy said. "Like I said, Isaac's very much his own person. His computer stuff, those are things way outside anything we worry about. I guess some younger folks, they might know about such things, but me, I'm more about good earth and what grows from it."

  "What about where he may have gone?" I said.

  "No idea. Isaac's from here, but he's not really 'of here.' He's his own soul. You aren't ignorant about what we do, and that wasn't what Isaac wanted, so he found his own path."

  "Any chance we can come inside, look at Isaac's things, see if we can find something?"

  McCoy smiled. "Isaac been gone from here a lot of years now. Doubtful anything he's got here from his past would help tell about his now. Besides, we're private people, out of need and necessity as much as just who we are. The fact is, you've gotten this far and we haven't shot you says something." To Pete, he said, "Life's not about easy answers."

  "No, sir, it's not."

  "And Isaac, he's a bird that might not want caged. I know this has to be hurting you."

  Pete nodded and bit on his bottom lip and looked at the ground.

  McCoy said he'd be back and headed back into the house.

  Woody said, "Man's lying through his teeth. He knows something. He's not even asking about what happened to Isaac. You got any thoughts on what to do next?"

  Through a second-story window, the spitting grandson stared at us. A figure had taken a post next to him, another boy about the same age, this one holding a rifle. My eyes moved to other windows and saw other people, also with guns and also with expressions that showed they wouldn't object to shooting someone.

  "I suppose there's a reason they didn't check us for weapons," I said.

  Woody nodded. "Sometimes it's better to get away, to live to fight another day."

  McCoy walked out about that time, holding a small gym bag. He handed the bag to Pete.

  "This won’t take away the hurt, but maybe it'll help a little," McCoy said. "You go on, have yourself a good life. You move on, build from whatever you got."

  Pete opened the bag and looked inside. He shut the bag and stuck it back out toward McCoy. "I can't take this," he said.

  McCoy pushed the brow his hat. "It's poor manners to refuse a man's generosity. What's there is yours now, so keep it. But now I'm gonna need you folks to roll on back to your vehicle. There's work to tend to today."

  "What about your son?" I said. "Aren't you the least bit curious where he's at?"

  McCoy put the hat back on, adjusted it until shade covered his face. "My son's an adult, capable to taking care of himself. Wherever he is, he's fine, I'm sure. I can't do much beyond that. Now, I've already asked you to leave once. Please don't make me ask twice."

  He headed back inside the house. The spitting grandson opened his window from the second floor and aimed his weapon in our direction, as did the other kid with him. Like dominoes tumbling, windows opened and guns pointed at us.

  "I think there's our cue to go," Woody said.

  15

  We got back to Woody's pickup without having much to say. Pete trudged behind like he was dragging a weight, the gym bag bouncing against his thigh. Once we were in the truck cab, engine running and driving away from the McCoys, my curiosity got the best of me, and I said, "Christ, but let me see what's in the bag."

  Pete threw the bag on my lap. A stack of hundred-dollar bills jumped out. Inside the bag were a bunch of its relatives. More hundreds, banded together. I flipped through them, counted, did the math in my head. "The old bastard gave Pete a hundred grand."

  "He paid me off like I was a whore," Pete said.

  "No offense to you, Pete, but no whore that looked like you would make a hundred grand."

  Pete turned his attention out the window. "I'll take half. You can have the rest."

  I cocked an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

  "I'll take it, do something with it. Fuck if I have an idea what. You put yourself in harm's way for my sake. It's the least I can do."

  Woody rolled down a window and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke out and letting it trail behind us. "You should wait and let's see if we can figure out what to do next about finding Isaac. I presume you're not giving up."

  "His family, they have an inkling where he is, don't they?" Pete said.

  "Possibly," Woody said. "I don't believe for a moment the old man doesn't care where his son is. A family like that, there're few moves made that the rest don't know about."

  "Tennis was awfully Zen about his son being gay," I said.

  "Tennis McCoy has repopulated so many times, one son opting out of the game won't make a dent in the passing of the family lineage," Woody said. "He imagines he's got some bullshit Native American bent, so he looks at Isaac as being 'two spirited.' It's what some tribes used to call those who didn't follow the usual gender route and would dress as braves or squaws instead."

  "Isn't 'braves' or 'squaws' brushing with a rather big brush?" I said. "They all didn't say that."

  "Are you going to give me grief about this? You know the point I was trying to make. What I'm saying is—"

  Pete sighed. "Jesus, but you two should just fuck and get it over with."

  Woody laughed. "Not even with someone else's dick."

  I held my hand to my chest as if clutching pearls. "That's hurtful."

  "The truth is often a hurtful thing."

  We dropped Pete off at the motel and drove to Woody's farm. The yapping multitude of dogs greeted us as we walked inside and headed into the kitchen. Woody went to cooking a pot of coffee.

  "I was expecting a lot more nightmare out of Tennis McCoy and his kin," I said.

  "Don't kid yourself," he said. "Man can act like he's smoking the product, but I wouldn't trust Tennis any farther than I could throw him."

  "He's a small guy. Work a good spin on him, you could chuck him a good distance, if you threw him Olympic hammer-style."

  Some dogs wandered in and gathered around Woody as he made coffee. He moved around them with practiced ease, as if the process were a dance—Fred Astaire if Ginger Roger
s had been a pack of strays.

  "How do you end up attracting every needy and attention-starved creature in four counties?" I said.

  "A question I've pondered since we met."

  From the stove, the percolator gurgled and popped.

  The coffee finished and Woody filled our mugs. He only poured mine two-thirds full, and I evened it out with milk and sugar. The first sip was the hardest, a thick, almost sludgy thing that takes a moment to appreciate, and by "appreciate," I mean "pray to God it doesn't kill you." Woody's coffee was the stuff of 1950s horror pictures, a concoction developing sentience and bound to take over the world. You couldn't stop it; you could only hope to contain it, one cup at a time.

  "Not letting us in, and being adamant about it, that seemed suspicious," I said.

  "He wasn't expecting company. And the man is a pot farmer. You don't just let strangers into your house, you've got illegal activity going on."

  "Didn't stop him from dropping a hundred large on Pete like it was pocket change. Which reminds me: what the hell were you thinking, telling Pete to keep the money?"

  "We've not done anything to deserve Pete giving us that much money. Driving him out to the McCoy place doesn't equate him shelling out fifty thousand dollars for gas money."

  I sipped at the coffee. It didn't get better with time. If anything, it only got angrier and more bitter sitting in the cup, as if plotting revenge for perceived wrongs.

  "Should we go back?" I said.

  "Maybe. Not yet, though. Doubtful McCoy would change his story."

  "There’s more going on here, though. Is it really possible the Feds were following Isaac?"

  "It sure as hell sounds like the way they operate. The question then becomes, what do the Feds want with Isaac?"

  "There's this weird anonymous, untraceable currency he's developed, and then there's the fact his old man's a drug kingpin. On a good day, either one would be a good starting point for a Feeb with a little curiosity."

  The coffee left a taste in the back of my mouth like licking a freshly paved road. I set my cup aside. "I'll go by the motel tonight, talk to Pete."

  Woody shook his head. "Give him a day or so to stew. Let him think about shit. He's got decisions to make, and he might want some head space to make them in." He finished his coffee. "You going to the meeting tonight?"

  Woody never missed an AA meeting. He had about a decade of sobriety, and he said it was because he was strict to the program. Sometimes it felt as if he lived his life like it was one endless meeting after another. When I'd asked him about it, he said it wasn't far from the truth, but he didn't care, either, since he was sober, and that was all that mattered to him.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'm going."

  Woody smiled. "Look forward to seeing you there."

  16

  I had physical therapy the next morning. I'd started back a few months earlier, as I'd worked to get through the self-loathing that kept me away, and the result was me gradually behaving more like a member of the human race. My limp was faded to next to nothing. My body ached less than it had in a long time. I could get up and down off of the toilet without effort, which I counted as a win.

  Izzy was asleep in the living room when I got home. I thought of the people who came home to pets eager and excited to see them. I came home to Rip Van Winkle with a drool issue.

  I cracked eggs into a skillet to fry and dropped bread into the toaster. Izzy, the only creature I'd known who could be awoke by smell, trundled into the kitchen, eyes at half mast, ready for another breakfast. I added an extra egg into the mix; not like she worried about her cholesterol.

  After the eggs were all done, I set my food on a plate and dropped Izzy's in her bowl. She wiped hers out in one slurp, and then eyed me, wanting more.

  The doorbell rang as I put my plate on the table. I muttered choice obscenities and answered the door.

  The guy on my porch was late 40s, broad going fat, in a dark blue suit and a striped tie, with thin graying hair he tried to make the most of. The woman next to him was younger, black, her hair short and close to the skull, no make-up, dressed in a black skirt suit and a white blouse. She had 50s-style sunglasses on, and he wore mirrored aviators. They were shoulder to shoulder as I opened the door. Only things missing were zippered jumpsuits and signs that read "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

  "I bet you don't want to ask me about my relationship with Jesus Christ," I said.

  The guy smiled; the woman did not. Both took out wallets and flipped them open to reveal badges and IDs from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  "I'm Agent Burwell, and this is Agent Davies," the guy said. "Mind if we come in?"

  "Mind me asking what this is about?"

  Burwell took off his sunglasses. "You were at the farmhouse of Tennis McCoy yesterday. Is that correct?"

  "I was. I was baking a pie and needed to borrow a cup of sugar."

  Burwell looked like a Baptist preacher making house calls. "We're not interested in anything about you, if you're worried about such things, Mr. Malone. But you're a former police officer, so you get how this works."

  "That's a lot about me already with absolutely nothing about you."

  "That's what the government does. So, about that question of us coming inside—"

  I led them into the kitchen. Izzy stood with her front paws on the table, licking the last scraps of my plate clean.

  "Goddammit," I said, grabbing the plate. She looked confused, and a little insulted. She sniffed around the top of the table, cleaning off the few bits of egg from the linoleum. I tapped her on the head and she put all four on the floor.

  I pointed to the door. "Go," I said, and to my surprise, she did, vanishing around the corner and into the living room to return to her much-deserved sleep.

  "She's a big one, isn't she?" Burwell said.

  "I ended up with more dog than I've got good sense," I said. "If I ratio-ed those things right, I'd get one of those Chihuahuas you can put in a teacup. Interest you in coffee? The pot's fresh."

  Burwell sat down at the table. "I'd appreciate it, thanks. Black."

  Davies kept standing, sunglasses still on, every inch of her the coolest customer in the room. "No coffee for me, thanks."

  "Well, feel free to take your sunglasses off, since I'm sure the sun isn't much of an issue in here." I poured a cup for Burwell and took a seat. "So where are you guys out of? Clarksburg?"

  Burwell nodded and drank coffee. "You were a state cop?"

  "I was, until I wasn't."

  "I read about what happened. It was all in the report on you."

  "It's a proud moment in every man's life when he gets his first FBI report."

  Burwell laughed. Behind him, Davies stood, shoulder propped against the wood paneling, arms crossed, expressionless.

  "What were you doing out at the McCoy farm?" Davies said. Her tone was, if not "bad cop," then definitely "authoritarian cop," which might be redundant.

  "I suppose I can't stand by the 'cup of sugar' story," I said. I explained to them about Pete and Isaac. I didn't mention the money. "Tennis said he didn't know where Isaac was, so we left."

  Davies said, "That's it?"

  "That is it," I said.

  "He let you guys walk out?"

  "He didn't invite us in for fried chicken, no, Agent Davies, which I had been hoping for. Would have been nice, because I was hungry, and it's obvious my dog eats me out of house and home. So you'll have to forgive me, but I am not sure why the Feebs—"

  Davies' eyebrows rose from behind her sunglasses. "Excuse me?"

  "Feebs. It's the nickname we always gave you kids when I was in the state police. You always had nicer cars than us. And better sunglasses."

  Burwell sipped his coffee. "Excuse Agent Davies; she's still learning the lingo and getting used to how to deal with people." He threw a look at her over his shoulder I couldn't see, but I could tell wasn't good. Her face tightened and her shoulders shifted and she pulled he
r arms in closer to herself. When he faced me again, Burwell gave me a half-smile bordering on a smirk, an expression that said, "These bitches, they be crazy."

  "You still haven't said why you care about me visiting Tennis McCoy," I said. "I mean, outside of the fact that McCoy's a pot farmer."

  Burwell said, "Oh, is Tennis McCoy a drug dealer? I had—"

  "Yeah, yeah, you didn't know that, but you can tell me who I banged underneath the bleacher in eleventh grade." I glanced at Davies. "Her name was Angela Callow." To Burwell, I said, "So why are you here? Besides the coffee and my excellent company."

  "It's all part of an ongoing investigation we can't discuss," Burwell said. He glanced at my left hand. "Read about that in the report, too."

  I held my hand up to my face, peeking through the slit where my ring finger should have been. "None of my gloves fit anymore."

  "You got a reputation as a cowboy after that. This a habit of yours?"

  I shook my head. "The way I figure, I've only got nine more chances, so why blow them?"

  Burwell did most of the talking that followed, asking me general issue questions, stuff about Pete, Isaac McCoy, Tennis McCoy. I didn't like how it felt, but I plowed through, and after a half-hour and a pot of coffee, they were both back on my front porch. Davies hadn't said another word since getting her hands slapped, and hadn't taken her sunglasses off, either.

  I stood on the porch with them, looking at the white Ford Focus sitting behind my Aztek. "The motor pool never lets you haven anything flashier for you guys to drive?"

  Burwell slipped back on his aviators. "Unlikely. Still better than your ride, though." He shook my hand. "Appreciate your cooperation. You have a great day."

  I said to Davies, "Was nice meeting you."

  She nodded. "You have a good day, Mr. Malone." She didn't offer to shake my hand.

  They drove off, off to whatever exciting adventure was next. Maybe they'd go chase aliens, or terrorists. Or they'd go back to Clarksburg and file paperwork in triplicate. My fingers were crossed on the aliens.