A Dredging in Swann

by Tim Garvin

  The trailer park was out of the Spartanville city limits, so the local tavern owners made their complaints to the sheriff, who was interested because Elton also dealt drugs. When the sheriff sent deputies and detectives to interview the residents, they said, booze, whores, gambling, what are you talking about? Then Harvey Clement, veteran outlaw and resident of trailer twenty-three, was busted for bad checks, wired up, and sent back to Coopertown. He vanished, and so far the sheriff had no further volunteers.

  When Harvey disappeared, Cody was just out of prison and working for Elton, clearing ash, cleaning tubs, and weed-eating. He believed that Elton had murdered him. A new rug materialized in Elton’s double wide when Harvey went missing, a blood-hiding rug, thought Cody, and images of throat slitting and body hauling assailed him for days. He had worked the hogs with Harvey, drugged with him, had even participated in a small orgy with him. He was a good-natured guy and could laugh about his small penis. Harvey told him about Elton’s other business, sending couriers to the Texas border to pick up bales of heroin, a run which Harvey himself had made three times.

  Now, back from his homeless stretch, Cody still rode his bike to Coopertown every few days to see his girlfriend, Keisha, and also to schmooze with the guys and gals, drawn by dark urges. Coopertown was like hanging with a black guy, is what it was. Simple and no bullshit, down in the stream of easy gliding and what-you-want. Pills and booze and jokes, some just funny and some cruel to test the bottom, to true the brotherhood. When Cody got near Elton, with his dark good looks and big hands and tall strong body, he felt danger trembles. The trembles made him feel alive, no doubt. Like meth though, which strung you out.

  He had finished wrapping and storing half the flytraps when he heard three fast fist-bumps against the metal door. He opened it to his father, Squint Cooper, in a blue T-shirt and denim jacket, a cigarette cocked out of the corner of his mouth.

  Squint said, “Well, surprise.” As he spoke, the cigarette danced like a miniature baton.

  Cody had seen his father only once since he returned from his homeless period, on his birthday almost a year ago, at a restaurant dinner organized by Charlene. His father had brought him a tent, a peace offering and bad joke about homelessness. It had been an unpleasant dinner.

  Cody said, “Hey, Dad.” He waited.

  “Let me come in.”

  “Nowhere to sit.” Flytraps covered the kitchen table. He didn’t want the bother of explaining, or justifying.

  “Well, that’s inhospitable. Come on out then.” Squint removed his cigarette and boot-crushed it into the gravel. “Let’s sit together and confer.”

  Under the trailer awning were two rusted metal chairs opposite a wooden two-person swing. The house and garage were visible through a screen of pines, and beyond, the small dock and strip of gray-green creek. Squint seated himself in a chair, producing an irritable metal squawk. Cody stepped onto the dirt, closed the door, and sat in the swing facing his father.

  Cody said, “What’s on your mind?”

  “Remember I used to say, what’s on your alleged mind when you were a kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Part of the household entertainment, which I am not sure you appreciated.”

  Cody waited, keeping his face expressionless.

  Squint said, “Well, son, a couple of things. First, recall our last conversation, in which you accused me of being a poor father. I have come today to concede it, if I didn’t then. Name a sin, and I will acknowledge it. That’s my mood. But I make this critical point—childhood is not a factory. It’s a fucking gauntlet. Your gauntlet was an asshole giant standing in the way of your nature, offering correction the only way I knew, which was whipping and keeping a short leash. I stand up to being a fool, if I was. But, Cody, you have to stand up to it’s not a factory. You come through childhood, not from it. Trailing clouds of glory, as the poet says. Therefore! I accept blame for the gauntlet, but not the factory. Because it ain’t a damn factory.”

  “Fair point.”

  “Fair point? Score one for the asshole! The second thing is what the fuck are you doing? You’re still flytrapping, aren’t you? Feel like lying, go ahead, but I saw that orange tent, the one I gave you for your birthday. I saw it on the internet, out on the base. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  Cody felt himself pale. He said, “What do you mean, you saw the tent?”

  “You were on the base flytrapping. Am I correct? I can see I am. Start off a lie if you want, but there it is. Thing is, I want you to come back to the farm. I’m expanding, and I need help.”

  “Wait a minute. How did you see the tent?”

  “In a video. There’s a motherfucker flying drones over the farm looking for violations. And he puts it on the web. I lost fifty hogs the other day and here comes the drone. I showed it to Seb Creek last night, and I recognized that orange tent.”

  “You showed Seb Creek?” Cody’s heart had begun to thud. He leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees and stare between his feet at the peaceful crumbles of gravel.

  “I’m trying to get the sheriff on the case, but he’s not interested. They are interested in flytrappers though, and they catch you again you’re going back to prison. I hope you know flytraps have gone to felony. Plus you were on the fucking base is my guess. They can bring that federal and flat fuck you up, son.” He held up two hands, index fingers extended. He said, “So, there it is. One, I accept my gauntlet guilt. Two, I offer a job. Now then, you might want to go back to prison. Some do. You can eat free and read books. But, one day I’ll die, and you and Charlene will have to figure what to do with the farm. Might as well get started. I’ll put you on management and books, though you might have to work the hogs if I get shorthanded, which I might from time to time. But I’m thinking of some kind of overseer. What do you say?”

  “What website?”

  “Prince something. Prince video, I think. Don’t worry, nobody looks at his fucking website except me. Okay, last thing is, Charlene called me. That’s why I’m here. I’ll admit it. She’s got my arm up behind my back, as she can do. I have been instructed to invite you to the Pass the Salt singers. You might like it, you never know. Wouldn’t hurt to get in with Seb Creek anyway, just in case.”

  “Why’d you show him the video?”

  “I told you. To get the sheriff on this drone guy, Peter Prince. Now get off the fucking video. Nobody’s going to see that video, and if they do they won’t know it’s Cody Cooper in the orange tent.” He raised his long arms above his head and clasped his hands, stretching. “Christ. You ever get tired of it? I do.”

  Cody looked up from the gravel. He said, “Of what?”

  “Oh, just the problem-solving. Just one problem after another. Everybody dies somewhere along the trail of their problems, and the problems win.” He stood. “That’s my pitch. So long, buddy.” He walked a few steps down the path, then turned. He said, “Think you might come back to the farm?”

  Cody lowered his head, then swiveled it to stare at his father. He said, “No. I’m never coming back.”

  Squint nodded. He said, “I admire that. But you’re wasting hate, son. I’m just the hurricane that blew through your life. So-fucking-what. That’s the nature of hurricanes. You got to get that much figured out before you’re fit to live.”

  He watched his father stride down the walk, past the garage. He heard the pickup’s engine rev, heard it fade.

  He rose and went inside to his laptop. On Peter Prince’s site, PrinceVideos.com, he found a recent post—hogs dead at cooper farms. He started the video. It showed the Cooper Farms barns, then cut to the dead box, full of carcasses. It was less than a minute and did not show the swamp, the creeks, the tent, or any of the inlet. It had been edited then. But no doubt the entire video was somewhere, like a gun, hidden but cocked, pointed at his life.

  He returned to the kitchen table and began wrap
ping the flytraps. He opened and closed his jaws, which had tightened and begun to ache in his father’s presence. About hurricanes, his father had been right, but also wrong. You didn’t have to hate hurricanes to avoid them. He finished the flytraps and deposited the neat bundles in the refrigerator on the flytrap shelf.

  Then he sat down in his big TV chair and began to rock back and forth over his knees. There was a video.

  A Gaff Scar

  Seb had gotten a text from Lieutenant Stinson moving the briefing to one. He had notes to write up before that, but on the way back to Spartanville, the do-list in his head got past five items, and he pulled into a QuickStop to make calls. He found the number for the federal prison in Kansas on his smartphone, called them, and, after some back-and-forth, a deputy administrator agreed to set up a call between Virginia and her brother.

  Then, he found the number of the lawyer Alex Person, whom he vaguely knew from around the courthouse. Then he decided not to call. A visit would be better, since, who knew, Person could have killed the out-of-touch convict to conceal fraud.

  His phone dinged with a text from Virginia. She had sent her mother-in-law’s name and number, which was part of the do-list, so he called and had a brief conversation with a nasal-voiced elderly woman, who said she had not seen her son for some months and feared for his life, since he was a lost soul, and she was his rock of ages and raft on the stormy sea. And also there was a woman calling three times just this week wanting money owed to her by Raymond Charles and now owed by his mother, Ms. Rubins, so claimed the woman. Ms. Rubins took the position that debts did not transfer from a son to a mother, in any shape or form, and that was right, wasn’t it? Seb said he thought so and left his number in case Raymond Charles showed up.

  He considered calling the Chicago police, but that felt like busywork at this point, since Raymond Charles did not rank as much of a suspect, down somewhere on the list with brother Marshall hiring a hit man.

  Seb swung himself into the passenger seat, opened his laptop, and began to read the articles he had saved that morning from the Swann Sun’s archives. Marshall Britt, the New York banker, was first mentioned in 1945 for purchasing several square miles of hunting ground on the Sable Inlet, then in 1950 for building a lavish lodge on the water, and again in 1959 for building Britt House, a mansion at the other end of Twice Mile Road, which traversed the two miles of the Britt waterfront estate. There were stories reporting his wife’s death from a horse kick, not from a fall, of finding Marshall’s empty boat three years later, and, six years after that, stories about his son Hugh’s murder, and Leo’s arrest and trial. Most of the murder stories were cursory, but one in the paper’s Sunday magazine reported the defense’s accusation that Bentley Branch had failed to record Marshall Britt’s revised will, and also mentioned a magnetized scale at the Britt fish house as a possible cause of the gaff fight on the dock. Seb wrote the author’s name, Jeff Yates, in his notebook.

  Germaine Ford appeared in the Style section of the paper in 1966 when her parents moved into the hunting lodge and again in 1967 when her family hosted an extravagant barbecue on the inlet. She was posed between her mother and father, her head cocked, her glance sidelong and off camera, her waist slim in her sundress, her blond hair long and swept over one shoulder. She was beautiful. After the murder in 1969, she did not appear again until her father’s obituary in 1984 and again in her mother’s in 1989. In 1999, she was mentioned again when hog waste from Cooper Farms, formerly the Britt estate, washed down Council Creek past the lodge. Then three months ago, the front page of the local paper announced her death and bequest to the convict Leo Sackler of the lodge, the twenty now much-prized acres on Sable Inlet, and her bank account. The story was also carried on the back pages of major papers around the country.

  The attorney Bentley Branch was mentioned again in his obituary. He was survived by his two sons, Gerald “Bug” Branch and Elver Branch. Bug Branch owned Branch Bail Bonds. Seb knew him.

  He closed the laptop, then his eyes, and Mia’s face came, at first hard to see, then steadying, like the moon reappearing in calming water. She must be invited and welcomed, like into a house, the porch, the hallway, the kitchen. Eventually the bedroom.

  His phone rang. The screen showed the name Walt Carney, the coroner.

  “Hey, Walt.”

  “Seb, got a minute?”

  “Sure. You figure it out?”

  “What I figured out is your victim does not have a broken neck. He has a broken leg instead. Broken tibia.”

  “And what do you conclude from that?”

  “I’m thinking he fell and got his leg caught in the rungs. I think he slipped between that place where the two ladder halves come together. I looked at Barb’s photographs, and that’s about a four-inch gap there, and that would be enough fulcrum to break a tibia. How did he get hung? I do not know. Or how’s this? He breaks his leg, so he hobbles up the ladder, and gets tangled or something. Hell, I don’t know. Anyway, that leg could have been the reason he wasn’t able to swing back on the ladder, if he was in pain and panicked.”

  “Did he have abrasions?”

  “He did. On the ankle, so that’s why I think he got his foot caught.”

  “Does the break indicate he fell backward?”

  “It does.”

  “Time of death?”

  “Sometime yesterday afternoon. Say one o’clock. Time of death is damn variable though. I’ll say approximately one o’clock, but if it comes to it, I can be pushed off that. For one thing, he was hanging in the middle of the air, so no conduction. But by rigor and temperature, best guess, one o’clock.”

  “Could it have been earlier? Say in the morning?”

  “Well, like I say … Why?”

  “He had an unidentified visitor around nine in the morning. Somebody tried to extort him. He called his daughter right after and told her, which is how I know about it. I was wondering if the guy could have still been there and heard the call, and it set him off.”

  “It’s a stretch. Really, it’s off the scale. But like I say, no conduction, so it’s tough. Also, nothing under his nails. Another little feature is he’s got a bullet scar on his right biceps. Through and through.”

  “It’s a gaff scar. He got in a fight when he was a kid, and a guy gaffed him.”

  “Well, that’s just what it looks like. I thought he might have been shot.”

  “What else? Was he healthy?”

  “Good health. No tumors.”

  “All right, Walt. Fernando will be there in a little while with Sackler’s daughter for the identification. Many thanks.”

  “I’ll file the report by the end of the day. Kate just left, by the way. She got his fingerprints. So is it murder?”

  “Probably. You want to confess, help me out?”

  “Not yet. Hey, what do you think about Emma? My wife. I told her I talked to you about singing, and she’s bugging me.”

  “We’re having practice tonight, and I guess I could present it to everybody, see what they say. But, Walt, down deep, probably not. You know, it’s kind of a therapy thing.”

  “Okay, good. Now at least I have some ammunition to resist the formidable Emma. Later.”

  Bug

  Branch Bail Bonds with its open handcuff sign under a triple B was across from the new courthouse-jail building. Seb had called Branch’s cell and found he was at the jail with his secretary getting a prisoner’s signature. They agreed to meet across the street in the bondsman’s office.

  Seb entered the waiting room and waved to the secretary, a small black woman, who spoke briefly into the phone and held a finger against the receiver as she looked inquiringly at Seb.

  Seb said, “I’m supposed to meet Bug. Is he around?”

  She gestured to a door. “Go back. I expect he’s napping by now. If he’s undressed, tell him you didn’t ask me.”


  Seb walked down the hallway to the second door, knocking twice against the wall as he entered. Behind a battered wooden desk, a large round-shouldered man in his sixties swiveled from a computer screen. He wore an unbuttoned green shirt over an orange T-shirt, and his belly mounded beneath it like a gym ball. His face was pink and puffy, and his hair went straight up in a flattop. Seb knew him as the parent of Mickey, one of his high school basketball teammates, and now as a bail bondsman.

  “What’s up, Seb? Sit.”

  Seb took one of the two wooden chairs in front of the desk. He said, “You heard Leo Sackler’s dead.”

  “Died of hanging.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “I knew of him. Leo was the star basketball player over at Georgetown High School. Before someone bombed it. Our black high school from yesteryear. He was a couple years ahead of me. So where’d you get my name?”

  “From Virginia, the daughter. She said Marshall Britt changed his will, and your dad didn’t register it. You ever hear that?”