Diners, Dives, and Dirty Deeds

by David F. Berens

  “In Switzerland,” he answered. “I bought it when I went to pastry school. I liked it so much, I shipped it back here when I came back home.”

  I turned around and said, “Alison, did you hear that? Ezra went to pastry school in Switzerland.” I was proud that I—a guy—was able to distinguish a European accent over a gay one.

  “How long were you in Europe?” I asked Ezra.

  “Two years. I always liked preparing food, and I had to make a living, so I wanted to open a restaurant. But my father … he told me I was crazy. I should just get a job. I didn’t want to get a job around here, so I went to Switzerland to learn to be a pastry chef.

  “Unfortunately, when I was away, both my parents died in a car wreck.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “Thank you. They had their house, and there was a little insurance money, so I came home and started my restaurant.”

  “Wow, what a story. You have to tell Alison this. Would you mind if she put any of it in her article? I don’t know if it would fit in or not.”

  “Ah, it’s not very interesting to put in a story. The food … now that’s interesting.”

  “Your chocolate cake is really interesting,” I said.

  Ezra stopped and looked around. “Here is a good place to start looking for mint.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb and said. “I picked back there last week, so we’ll look over here today. Come with me; I’ll show you what to look for.”

  It only took Ezra a minute to find some plants. He let me take some pictures before he picked them. “Look for these dark, textured leaves,” he instructed. “Pinch them off just above the bottom set of leaves. You need to leave a pair of leaves so the plant will regrow.”

  Alison and I split off from Ezra, and we actually found and picked some mint plants. After about fifteen minutes of gathering, we took them over to Ezra and asked him what other herbs he looked for out here.

  “Most of the other herbs I grow myself. When they’re in season, I pick wild berries, and I pick some mushrooms.”

  “Do you ever hunt for truffles?” Alison asked.

  “You need dogs to find truffles. I use them a little at my restaurant but only for one dish. I have a friend who gets them for me. The one coming today, in fact.”

  He no sooner said that than we heard someone walking up from behind us.

  “Hey, Ezra,” a tall, thin man said in a heavy rasp. I saw a wide scar trailing down from his scraggly beard and wondered if that was the source of his unusual voice.

  “Hello, Ricky,” Ezra replied. Ricky was wearing a ball cap that used to be red. I think his jacket used to be brown, but now it was dark gray. His pants were also gray. I couldn’t tell what their original color was. “I want you to meet my new friends,” Ezra said. “This is Alison. She’s writing a magazine article about my restaurant.”

  “No foolin’. I never met a writer before.”

  I wondered if he’d ever met a reader before.

  “And this is her photographer, Jack.”

  Ricky nodded, so I did too.

  “Ricky is an expert in everything that can be found in these woods,” Ezra said to us. Turning to Ricky, he said, “Alison was asking about truffles.”

  “Yeah?” Ricky said. “Ya wanna buy some?”

  “Oh, no,” Alison replied. “I was just curious, that’s all. What else do you find in these woods?”

  “Ginseng. I get a lot of ginseng. When that’s not growin’, I mine gold and gems.”

  “Really?” Alison said. “You mine gems?”

  “Yeah, there’s lotsa good gems ’round these parts.” He smiled for the first time, revealing dark, uneven gaps between his teeth. “Butcha gotta know where to find ’em.”

  “What kinds of gems?”

  I couldn’t tell if Alison was just being nice or was genuinely curious. I was expecting to hear Dueling Banjos at any moment.

  “Mostly quartz. Some sapphires, rubies. I’m lookin’ for an emerald.”

  “Have you ever found any emeralds here?” Alison asked.

  “I seen a few.”

  “Could you identify one if you saw it?”

  I flinched and tried to get her attention without being too obvious, but I wasn’t quick enough. Ricky said, “Yep,” and Alison said, “Jack has one with him. We’re not sure if it’s a real emerald or not. Jack, why don’t you show him your emerald to see if he thinks it’s real?”

  A thousand thoughts fired in my brain at the same time, and none of them were good. I did not want to show this dirtball my emerald, but I had it with me and I just rolled with it. I shrugged off my pack and set it on the ground to take out the emerald.

  “Jesus Christ Almighty!” Ricky yelled. “Lemme see that thing.” He grabbed it out of my hand before I even stood back up.

  He held it up to the sunlight and twisted it around; hefted its weight in his hand. “This sure looks like an emerald to me,” he said. Where the hell did you git this?”

  Alison started to answer, but I cut her off by shouting her name. She looked shocked for a second; then she glared at me.

  I turned back to Ricky and held out my hand for the emerald. “I found it at one of the gem mines south of here.”

  “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. We passed a sign along the road and pulled in. Can I have my emerald back please?”

  “I think I might need to hang on to this myself,” Ricky said. “How much ya figure we can git for this, Ezra?”

  Give me that!” I said, grabbing at the emerald.

  Ricky stiff-armed me and held the emerald at his arm’s length behind him.

  “Hey!” I yelled, knocking his arm to the side and rushing him.

  I tackled him, but this guy was really strong, and before I knew what happened he had me in a chokehold. Alison started screaming, and I started kicking and elbowing as hard as I could, but that just made him pull back harder against my throat until it seriously felt like he was about to break my neck. I couldn’t breathe at all.

  I collapsed, and he tied my wrists together behind my back, pulling very tight with a thin cord of some kind. I lay on the ground gasping for breath and trying to gather my wits, which wasn’t aided by Alison’s screaming, which seemed to be getting louder. She suddenly stopped screaming, and I wriggled around to look at her. She, too, had her hands tied behind her back, plus, a handkerchief was pulled tight through her mouth and tied behind her head.

  I started to get up, and Ricky jerked Alison in front of him with one hand, while he held a knife to her throat with the other. “Just shut up and cooperate, or your girlfriend gits it.” Alison was whimpering. I was in total disbelief. I looked around for Ezra, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Ricky let go of Alison and grabbed my arm instead. “We’re gonna walk this way.” He shoved me in front of him. “Keep walkin’,” he said as I felt the point of his knife jab me in the middle of my back. I jerked forward just ahead of the sharp tip of his blade.

  He took us back to where we had parked. Ezra’s Mercedes was gone. My Subaru was still there, plus an old banged-up faded red pickup truck that said Power Wagon on the side.

  He shoved us into the truck unceremoniously and slid the wheel.

  Sheathing his knife, he said, “Either of y’all try any funny business, I stab the girl in the leg. Do it again, I’ll just gut ya both.”

  He bounced us around unpaved roads and paths for what I guessed was fifteen minutes. I tried to focus hard on where he turned and look for any landmarks. I thought I could find my way back, but the foliage was so thick, I really wasn’t sure.

  He stopped without pulling over anywhere, got out and walked around to the passenger door.

  “Git out,” he said with a grin as he jerked it open, “and remember, I got the knife.”

  My camera was still around my neck, but Ricky yanked it off and tossed it onto the floor of his truck. He marched us up a well-worn trail, and a group of dogs started barking�
��barking a lot. Ahead on the left was a big fenced-in pen with what looked like a dozen beagles jumping at the door, jumping on top of each other, and barking and howling like crazy. Ricky pulled out his keys and unlocked the padlock on the door.

  “You first,” he said to me. Git in there.”

  “What, you want me to get inside the dog pen? They’ll tear me to shr—.”

  “I said, git in there!” He shouted and pulled his knife from its sheath to emphasize his point.

  The dogs or the knife? I couldn’t come up with a better alternative, so I decided to take my changes with the dogs.

  “When I open the door, you jump in there quicklike, and don’t let any dogs out. If any dogs git out, I’ll blame you for it.”

  He opened the door a couple inches and shoved the point of his knife against my back. I jumped forward again. Several dogs already had their noses out the door. They seemed intent on sniffing me out for now. I pushed back against them with my shin and worked my way inside. No escapees.

  He repeated the procedure with Alison, and then relocked the padlock on the door. The stupid beagles were jumping all over us, every one barking non-stop.

  Alison leaned over them and shouted, “Hush!”

  I was surprised by her sudden outburst. I hadn’t realized Ricky had removed her gag. But the dogs all stopped barking. One or two whimpered, and Alison’s glare was all it took to silence them.

  “Stupid dogs never listen to me,” Ricky growled, and he ambled back down the trail.

  The ceiling in our pen was just barely too low for me to stand up straight. It was maybe six feet at the front wall, but it sloped down toward the back. Alison’s hair barely cleared, but I think her head had plenty of room to spare.

  Alison suddenly burst into tears, putting her head on my shoulder and saying, “Jack, I am so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I told her.

  “No it’s not,” she said, still bawling. “I told him about your emerald. I never should have done that. I’m so sorry.”

  We repeated that cycle a few times until she started to settle down.

  “I’ll get us out of here. It’s just a dog pen. How tough can it be?”

  I kicked at the fencing a couple times and found that a dog pen can be pretty tough.

  “Turn around,” I said, “and let me see if I can get your hands untied.”

  I got down on my knees and used my teeth to work at the cord that held her wrists. Five minutes later, my jaws were killing me and I had nothing to show for it.

  “This is not going to get it,” I said in defeat.

  I stood back up, and Alison sat down in a corner, curling into a ball with her head in her knees. At first the dogs swarmed her, but one at a time they wandered away—all but one, which lay down against her and moaned accompaniment to her sobs.

  After a while, it seemed the dogs had gotten used to us and stayed mostly quiet. Looking around, I assessed our immediate situation. First priority was to free my hands. They had long since gone numb but still gave me random jolts of intense pain.

  There were two long, gang doghouses made out of plywood, back-to-back inside the pen. I walked around them to find something sharp, but the dogs had everything smooth. I picked the least rounded edge I could find and started rubbing my wrist bindings up and down against it.

  My shoulders got sore, my wrists were badly scratched and probably bleeding, I had stabbed myself with countless splinters, and I didn’t have the slightest idea if I’d weakened the cord any or not. I just kept at it.

  I sang some songs to myself—songs with a heavy beat so I could keep time with my sawing motion and distract myself at the same time. I kept cycling through the same ones and was into my third round of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go when I felt something start to give. I started sawing like mad, and my wrists flew apart, sending me down onto a nearby beagle who gave a truncated bark and was now gasping for breath.

  I stroked the beagle’s head in apology and was amazed at how purple my hands were. My right wrist had a reddish-black gouge all around it, and my left wrist still had the cord dug in deep. I pulled off the rest of the knot with my teeth and began rubbing some blood back into my wrists and hands. They hurt like hell, and it took a good ten minutes to get the full use of my fingers back.

  Step two: get out of this pen. I walked around the perimeter, looking at how the fence was attached to the wooden frame. Alison looked like she had fallen asleep. I guess the stress was just too much for her.

  The wire looked to be the kind you put on from a big roll and was held on with staples from the outside—probably from a staple gun. This meant they were only about a half inch deep. The ends of the fence were at the back left corner. I raised my right foot and easily kicked a big section right out. Not so tough after all.

  I only kicked out the staples from the top half of the fence, so the dogs stayed inside. I climbed out, walked around, and sat down beside Alison.

  I tapped her lightly on the shoulder. “Hey,” I said quietly.

  “Alison.”

  Another tap.

  “Huh?”

  “You fell asleep.” I leaned against her shoulder, the fence between us. “Time to get up.”

  “Ohhh, this is all my fault,” Alison groaned.

  “Stop that. Come on. It’s time to go.”

  “I’m so sorry I got you into this mess. I shouldn’t have mentioned the emerald to Ezra. How could I be so stupid? Then you wouldn’t be—hey!”

  She tried to stand up. It was an awkward attempt with her hands still tied behind her back.

  “How’d you get out there?”

  “I’m a magician. No locked room can hold me. Or dog pen.”

  “I’m serious!”

  “So am I. Wait… what? You told Ezra about the emerald?”

  She rolled onto her side to get up, but a sleeping dog was in her way. She finally straddled it, waking the dog, who immediately began sniffing her crotch.

  “Stop that,” she berated the curious dog.

  The beagle put its head down and whimpered.

  “How do you do that?” I asked. “Nevermind. Back to telling Ezra about the emerald. When did this happen?”

  She stood up and banged her head on the low ceiling, eliciting a groan.

  “When you went outside to get some pictures. I was still eating my cake. Ezra asked me what else we had done in the area, and I told him about the gem mine.”

  She bounced up and down and said a bit frantically, “How did you get out there? And are you going to just gloat over your David Copperfield stunt, or are you going to get me out too?”

  “Go over to that corner and I’ll help you out.”

  I pulled Alison out of the pen by her shoulders and we both tumbled onto the ground. Fortunately, I broke her fall with my head.

  While I was untying her wrists, I asked, “What did you say to Ezra about the emerald?”

  “Just that you found a big one. I’m sorry. We were talking about the cake, and he asked me that, and then you came back in. That was the whole conversation.”

  “And he conveniently suggested a trip out here into banjo country. It’s no big deal. For now the important thing is to get us out of here.”

  With Alison’s urging, the dogs kept quiet while we crept past the edges of the dog pen. There was no sign of Ricky. Apparently, he’d planned to leave us out here… for how long? Who knows?

  Thankfully, my attentiveness during our bumpy ride in Ricky’s truck paid off. I knew which way to go to get back to my car, and it was getting dark fast. We had each already tripped a few times in the two ruts that made up the road. In the coming dusk, it became clear there was no way we were going to make it back tonight. We were going to have to bivouac.

  We left the road and walked deeper into the woods to find a place to spend the night. I was paranoid about being seen from the road. Finally, I spotted one of those trees with so many thick, tiny leaves that you can’t even see the trunk. Alison said it was a cedar
. Its branches went all the way to the ground, and I thought it might make a great cover.

  I crawled in to the trunk and broke off some lower branches. They were really tough and rubbery, and it took a lot of effort, but my idea worked. I kept removing branches until I had cleared enough space for the two of us, and I dropped them straight down onto the ground to make a bed. It was a poor substitute for a hotel room, but it would have to do.

  Alison crawled in beside me and lay down. She shifted some of the branches underneath her.

  “This is really nice. Thank you.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

  I lay down beside her, and Alison hugged me and started crying again. I hugged her back and didn’t say anything. After a while, she lifted her head in front of mine and said, “I’m sorry I got you into this mess. I’m sorry for everything. You’ve been a real savior. Thank you.”

  I put my arm under her head and pulled her against my shoulder. “You were right about this tree being cedar. I recognize the smell from my mother’s cedar chest.”

  “It’s a nice smell,” Alison replied.

  We eventually fell into a fitful sleep. The cedar boughs helped some, but the ground was still hard, plus it had gotten really cold. I was surprised when Alison nudged up against me and brought my arm to wrap around her shoulders. We spent the rest of the icy night sharing each other’s warmth.

  6

  Shotguns and Trailers

  I was awake when the first light appeared. I could feel the gentle rise and fall of Alison’s breathing, so I remained still and started evaluating the many thoughts that were racing through my brain. I had some ideas that I liked more than others. None were perfect.

  Alison stirred, and I shifted my legs. She rolled over to face me and squeezed in tight. “It’s cold.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “and it’s probably going to feel a lot colder once we get out of our nest.”

  “Ohh, do we have to?”