by Tim Dorsey
“What’s he doing?” asked Coleman. “He’s not even at the machine. He’s standing to the side at the little metal shelf that’s like a table.”
“He’s still at the ATM proper. It’s his until he relinquishes the zone.”
“But he’s just playing with his wallet.”
“I think he’s looking for his card,” said Serge. “And making a deposit in my patience karma.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” said Coleman. “I think he already used the machine and is now reorganizing all his shit. We may be waiting for nothing.”
“Could be,” said Serge. “But there’s an appropriate social procedure to find out.”
“How?”
“We clear our throats at super-high volume and then stare at him unflinchingly,” said Serge. “As a courtesy.”
“Then what?” asked Coleman.
“If he’s into a wholesale spring cleaning of his billfold, he won’t look back. But if he really is waiting to use the machine and can’t find his card, he’ll reflexively glance up. Then he’ll hurry his search or wave us on. Either way, we’ll know the score so we can make the polite choice . . . Ready?”
Coleman nodded.
“Ahem!” Cough, cough. “Clearing my throat now, ahem!” said Serge. “That would be my throat clearing, ahem . . .”
“Clearing my throat, too,” said Coleman. “A-hem!” Cough. “And now a fart.” Pffffft . . .
“Coleman!”
“What?”
Serge pointed. “He’s downwind. The national fabric.”
“He’s still going through his wallet,” said Coleman. “He’s not looking up.”
“There’s our answer,” said Serge. “But we give it another ten-second cushion as a fail-safe, and then move very slowly in case he misinterpreted what I meant about stabbing him.”
. . . Eight, nine, ten. They crept forward. Serge slipped a magnetic card into the slot and began entering his pass code.
From the side: “You are one rude motherfucker!”
“Uh-oh,” Serge said to himself. “A wild card.” He tried to hurry the transaction, but that only made him mess up.
“You deaf, too, motherfucker?”
“What?” Serge turned. “But I didn’t mean—”
The man crowded in from the left side, stretching to get his face between Serge and the machine. “Do you just cut in line whenever you feel?”
“I’m sorry,” said Serge. “I thought you had completed your transaction and were reorganizing your wallet.”
“That’s what you get for fuckin’ thinking!”
Serge thought: What does that mean?
The man tried to wedge himself farther between Serge and the machine.
“Please stop leaning against me,” said Serge. “I’ll just get my money and she’s all yours.”
“And then you just walk away, motherfucker?”
Serge got his money and walked away.
Ten minutes later, Coleman sat in the passenger seat as the ’76 Gran Torino tooled down the Overseas Highway. “That guy was unbelievable.”
“I still can’t process what my eyes just saw,” said Serge. “But you were there. I’m not imagining things, right?”
“No, man. That dude was off the charts.”
“If you tried telling people this story, it would sound like bad fiction some guy wrote in a book,” said Serge. “But it really did happen to me. And it was a nice shopping center; that’s what threw me off balance.”
“He just went on and on,” said Coleman. “Still yelling even after you left.”
“That’s the nature of the twat-heads,” said Serge. “The second I responded to his initial insult with patience, he took that as a weakness green light to unload all the emotional bile he brought with him to the ATM from breakfast. And I should know: I have the same perpetual loop spinning in my head of people who have fucked with me going back to kindergarten, running nonstop, over and over, driving up my blood pressure and pissing me off until I find myself muttering out loud and honing the absolute perfect comeback ten years later: ‘Oh yeah? Well, you’re wrong.’ . . . That kind of pent-up rage will eat you alive unless you get your arms around it and recognize the problem.”
“So by knowing that it’s just inside your head, you’ve learned to turn it off?”
“Not exactly,” said Serge. “Some jerk crosses my path and I beat the piss out of him for what all those other people did to me. Then I can turn it off.” He turned to Coleman. “Is that normal?”
Coleman shrugged. “I thought everyone was looking at me in the post office.”
Serge pulled over to the side of the road and opened the door.
Coleman got out his own side. “But you still didn’t do anything to that ATM guy. That’s progress.”
“You know me when I put my mind to something. It’s all about coping mechanisms.” Serge stuck his key in the trunk and popped the hood. “Where’s that tire iron?”
Coleman gestured with his beer. “Under those rags by the spare.”
“Good eye.” Serge reached for the metal bar. “What was I talking about?”
“Coping skills.”
“That’s right.” Serge raised the iron high over his head and brought it down hard like a carnival mallet.
A curdling, muffled scream from under duct tape.
“Oooooo!” Coleman winced. “You got the ATM guy right in the kneecap.”
“For some reason that always sounds to me like pottery breaking.”
Coleman chugged the rest of his beer. “How do you feel?”
“Now I can turn it off.” He reached in the trunk again. “Every day you spend sweating the small stuff is such a waste. Snatching dicks like this out of parking lots is much more constructive.” He yanked hard.
Another ghastly, muffled scream echoed from the trunk well.
Serge stood back up. “You can’t allow the jerks to get inside your head.” He held out his hand.
Coleman looked at Serge’s bloody palm holding a diamond-stud earring. “It’s just like that other jerk in the store. Do all assholes wear those?”
“Only the ones who are overcompensating for a face that looks like a scrotum.” Serge stuck his hand in his pocket. “Unfortunately for this guy, he ran right into my psyche without knocking, plopped down on the couch, and propped his dirty feet up in my Happy Place.”
“You were more than patient.”
CATFISH
Local evening news came on. Dramatic theme music that sounded like a loud, rapid-fire teletype, even though nobody had seen a teletype in decades.
“Good evening. Our top story tonight: A major crackdown has begun on the I-95 pipeline of OxyContin being dispensed from numerous South Florida pill mills that have sprouted like mushrooms in recent years. Utilizing strengthened laws passed by the legislature this session, various police agencies have been raiding the most brazen pain clinics operating with little more than a few bare rooms and ballpoint pens. But now state police have opened a second front on the war against the so-called hillbilly heroin, intercepting large vehicles of patients and pills . . .”
The televised image switched to earlier footage of a school bus, painted gray, stopped on the side of the interstate. Deputies led a single-file line of handcuffed passengers into a series of correctional vans. Then a live news conference at a nearby command post: a trophy table covered with pill bottles, cash and two .38 revolvers. A commander with the state police stepped up to the podium, holding the leash of a German shepherd. “Today marks a new offensive on the scourge of prescription drug traffickers laying waste to South Florida. Taking advantage of just-passed laws, we’re stepping up the fight against out-of-state couriers who have begun using sophisticated tactics that until now haven’t been seen outside the cocaine trade, such as concealing contraband insi
de fuel tanks and swallowing condoms. This is just the beginning of the battle, but we will not rest until—”
A thumb hit a button on a remote control. The TV switched off. Next to the television was a table not unlike the one at the news conference: pill bottles, cash, guns.
“What are we going to do?” asked someone in the background wearing a trucker’s hat. He pointed at the dark TV tube. “They got our first two buses. And I’m sure they’ll find the third we ditched after unloading all this stuff.”
“I’m thinking,” said the man with the remote control.
“But we just dumped all those guys at the beach and told them to wait. Most are wearing bib overalls and engine grease. It’s just a matter of time before they connect them to the abandoned bus.”
The first man massaged his temples. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“But, Catfish—”
“Shut up! For fuck’s sake! You said we dumped them at the beach, which means they don’t know where this motel room is . . .” He tossed the remote on a bed and eased down into a chair. “So just grow a pair and let me logically work this out like I always do . . .”
He was the leader. The gang loosely numbered forty. Six buses total, three going each way at all times. With Oxy tabs running up to eighty bucks each on the street, they’d made so much money so fast that they hadn’t figured out the laundering end, and a few million dollars was buried in a scattering of ramshackle tobacco barns in Bourbon County and the horse country surrounding Lexington. The rest of the gang drove the buses, but he rode in a trail vehicle with no contraband, allowing him to monitor operations while remaining clean in case the cops stopped them. It was an old Dodge Durango. He could afford a Rolls, but this was his blood.
His birth certificate said Jebediah Alowishous Stump, but everyone called him Catfish. Because of the deep scars on the backs of his legs. Long story.
Short version: His dad, Cecil, ran stills from Bowling Green to Cumberland Lake. Clear whiskey. And on the boy, he was quick with the switch. During the war, which was number two, Cecil ran black-market rubber, stored the tires in the garage attic. Catfish was playing with matches. It wasn’t that the garage burned down, but the rationed tires were worth more than the entire house. And if you’ve never seen a bunch of tires go up, well, it’s a big black smoke signal for several counties. The police could have been blindfolded and just followed the smell. Those were the deepest of the scars on Jebediah’s buttocks and thighs.
Next to that transgression—or even in front of it—the cardinal rule: Never, ever touch Dad’s prized frog-darter fishing lure. It was Cecil’s secret weapon for catching fish, passed down generation to generation from his great-grandfather. And if anything ever happened to it, there would be a beating that would make the Spanish Inquisition wince. Jebediah had seen photos of the record catfish his dad had landed at the lake cabin, thanks to that lure. The boy had never caught a catfish. The frog-darter became the forbidden fruit.
Just before dawn on a Sunday when his pa was running moonshine halfway to Drip Rock, Jebediah took the skiff out on the lake, manning the small motor till at the back of the boat like Bud from Flipper. He anchored at dawn and went to work. Casting and casting, nibble here and there, then thoughts of a big one when the hook snagged something monstrous, but it had just gotten caught on the bottom, and the boy pulled up weeds. Hours passed. The line snapped on another bottom snag. Jeb wiped his brow. He opened his dad’s tackle box for a fresh hook. At the bottom sat the frog-darter. The boy glanced around the lake’s distant shores. Nobody would ever know. He took a deep breath, then attached the lure and cast.
And you can’t make this up: almost immediately a bite from a catfish larger than anything in his dad’s photos. Jeb reeled with all his might. The fish hit the surface a couple times, getting closer to the boat. Suddenly something huge caught the edge of Jeb’s eye. What the hell? A great horned owl swooped down and snatched the catfish in its talons and flew off.
The frog-darter still attached.
So now Jeb is reeling again, facing upward as the bird circled the sky over the boat. Finally, it released the fish, which splashed into the water next to the skiff. But something was wrong. The fish wasn’t on the line anymore. The owl was. Somehow the lure had pulled from the fish’s mouth and gotten caught in the talons. And the bird was trying to fly off with the darter. This wasn’t about a trophy fish anymore; it was survival. Jeb reeled like never before.
The owl slowly came down, flapping spastically with all it had. Come onnnnnnn, please don’t break the line. Forty feet, thirty, twenty . . . But how did you land an owl? Jeb freed his right hand to grab a paddle from the bottom of the boat. Frantic reeling resumed. Ten feet, five, three, then all hell broke out. Paddle swinging and missing, wings flapping, screeching, feathers flying. Then a brushing swat from the paddle clipped a wing and more feathers. Every few swings, Jeb began finding his mark. Nothing direct, just glancing blows with only minor effect. But after a while they began adding up. Wham, wham, wham. The owl didn’t feel so good anymore, and not flying too well either.
Finally a smack to the head, and the bird spun down into the boat, running around like a chicken in the confined space. Wham. The owl staggered. Wham. It fell over, still. Jeb rushed to retrieve the lure, tugging and twisting. He pricked two of his fingers, drawing blood, but nothing like what awaited him back at the cabin if he didn’t get this job done. No luck. It was in one of the talons good with a reverse barb, and Jeb didn’t have the right tools in the boat. The task required completion back onshore. The boy pulled up anchor. From his vain work trying to free the lure, Jeb could tell the bird was only unconscious. He didn’t need any more adventure. So to play it safe, he bound the owl’s claws with rope and tied them to a spare, empty gas can that sat in the front of the vessel. He pull-started the motor and began heading home.
Roughly a half mile from the bank, an abrupt noise. Commotion. The owl was awake. It flapped its wings. And started flying.
At the other end of the boat, Jeb couldn’t believe his eyes as the bird slowly lifted out of the skiff, can and all, and took off across the lake. It was a damn big owl, but how was the boy supposed to know it was that strong? “Now I’ve lost the frog-darter and a gas can.” He considered running away with the circus. Then Jeb noticed something. The bird could get airborne, but the weight of the can prevented it from gaining any altitude. It flapped and skimmed its way low over the water.
Jeb gave the motor full throttle. The boat planed up and took off like a shot across Lake Cumberland . . .
About that time, his father’s trusty Hudson pickup truck with the running boards returned empty from the last hooch run. He walked around the side of the cabin and reached for the screen door. He stopped and squinted into the distance.
“What in the jumping fuck?” He walked slowly down toward the bank and scratched his head. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, live long enough and you will see damn near everything.”
Coming straight toward him, flapping for all it was worth, one of the largest horned owls he’d ever laid eyes on. Carrying a gas can. And right behind, his ten-year-old son, running the fishing skiff at top speed, one hand on the till, the other stretched out over the starboard side with a paddle.
Wham.
The paddle snapped. The bird fell in the water and the boy circled around to fetch it. He breathed the biggest sigh of his short life, in the clear. Then he saw his dad onshore.
Gulp.
Jeb docked the boat without speaking, and got out like everything was normal.
Cecil gazed down into the fishing skiff at a broken oar and a dead owl tied to a gas can. He looked up and studied the boy. “Son, what exactly have you been doing this morning?”
Jeb stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground. “Nothin’.”
“How’d my frog-darter get in that bird’s foot?”
“I d
on’t know.”
Cecil shook his head. “This is some bizarre enough shit.” He headed into the cabin.
Jeb stood in place and cringed. Here comes the switch.
Instead, Cecil came back out with a Kodak Brownie camera. “Hold up that owl.”
Jebediah still kept that photo to this day. But he never did catch a catfish.
So they called him Catfish.
Chapter Five
KEY LARGO
An old Magnavox television flickered in the modest ranch house. Local news. The picture was a little snowy.
Coleman randomly tossed sofa cushions on the floor and glanced back at the tube. “Serge, do you think they’ll chase another guy on TV today that we can throw rocks at?”
Serge ransacked the kitchen cupboards. “One can only hope.”
Coleman strolled to the dining room and dumped a handful of change on the table. “Found this in the couch.” A nickel skipped off and rolled across the terrazzo. “What about you?”
Serge closed a cabinet door. “Nothing.” He dumped food containers into the trash. “And I was hoping to find drugs or weapons.”
“Didn’t you say this guy was ninety-three.”
“He still could have a roll of hundreds stashed in the sugar bowl or Metamucil.” Serge opened a box of spaghetti and watched thin sticks fall into the garbage. “Crap.”
Coleman went through the cushions of a recliner. “More money.” Seventy-eight cents went on the table. “Why are we going through this old guy’s house anyway?”
Serge dug a hand into a large can of Folgers. “Because he’s dead.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.” Serge emptied a box of Tide. “I don’t kill everybody.”
A thumping sound from behind a closed closet door. Muffled whining.
Coleman fired up a joint and looked back over his shoulder. “What are you going to do with the ATM guy?”
Serge held a jar of olives to his eye. “Still on the bubble . . . Did you check those chairs?”
