Any Deadly Thing

by Roy Kesey

  Mitch looks at him. Opens the door and gets in. Stares at the steering wheel. Now he nods, and Donny whoops and climbs in. Mitch starts the pickup. Then he turns the engine off and pulls the key out of the ignition.

  –What?

  –No point. Everybody will be gone already. The trucks, everything.

  –It’s been five minutes!

  –Exactly.

  –So we go on our own. You’ve got the address. Rock and roll.

  –All my gear’s at the station.

  –It’s a horse in a stump. How much gear do you need?

  Mitch rubs his face.

  –I could go and watch, I guess. Maybe help out a little, communications, but…

  Donny nods, looks at Mitch, nods again. Mitch starts the engine, pulls onto the road. Donny brings out a beer, tries to hand it over and Mitch slams on the brakes.

  –Okay, okay.

  –Seriously, Donny, you can’t fuck this up. We go, we watch, we—

  –Easy. Horse in a stump. Easy as cake.

  –I’m not joking, man. You stay the hell out of the way.

  Up through town to Rock Pit Road, slow east as the asphalt turns to dirt and the potholes start. Every third house is a trailer, the tweakers out front with their sunburns and bad teeth, the yards decorated with refrigerators and washing machines. Not a part of town Donny’s been to in a while, but he knows Mitch gets called out here fairly often. These folks are way out over the edge not even counting all the labs. Bad wiring, makeshift chimneys, the whole mess.

  Donny catches a whiff of that sweet old smell, that not-quite-molasses smell, and smiles. Mitch is arguing with himself out loud—plenty of redwood stumps from back in the day, ten feet tall and rotted hollow, but how would you get a horse into one? Donny stays out of it. The twelve-pack is now a seven-pack. He opens another, and Mitch looks over.

  –If this was a real fire, your ass would have been out on the road a mile back.

  Donny toasts the thought, shifts his legs, and his foot hits something under the seat. Something awfully heavy for how small it is. He leans forward, pretends to scratch his shin, sees a crosshatched grip. He straightens up and looks over at Mitch, impressed.

  Mitch doesn’t notice. Donny snickers and points at a Jolly Roger hanging from a pole stuck in a dishwasher. He smells molasses again, shivers, asks what happens when a lab blows, what the fireman protocol is. Mitch shrugs, says they make sure everybody’s out, and let it burn. No sense saving something that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

  Mitch looks at him, and Donny waits for the joke. It doesn’t come. Donny nods but Mitch’s eyes are wrong and then he gets it: Mitch thinks these people are Donny’s people too. Which is bullshit. Mitch looks back at the road. Total fucking bullshit, and Donny almost comes out and says so. He doesn’t know these people. He doesn’t even …. Well, he might know people who know these people, but still, miles apart. He checks his teeth with his tongue, and there’s one in back that’s a little sore but the rest are fine, even the fake ones up front.

  The ridges to either side are thick with timber and ferns and scrub. They hit the fork and the road gets even worse—switchbacks, ruts, washboard. Donny’s still angry, and now down to a five-pack. He wishes he’d put a little something in his stomach first, maybe one of those muffins. He wonders if he guessed wrong about what Mitch was thinking.

  –All right, he says. So some days I’m nothing but an armadillo. So fucking what?

  –What, like, armored?

  –Not exactly.

  –Roadkill?

  –Warmer.

  –I’m out of guesses, man.

  –Leprosy.

  –I’m not even going to ask.

  –Suit yourself, says Donny, but it’s pretty cool.

  A sharp left on Humboldt Heights, barely a road at all, and the air darkens as they push in, trees cutting off the light, a thin mist settling into the bracken. There’s a hell of a word, thinks Donny—fucking bracken. They see the lights, and a second later they hit a big red traffic jam. Mitch kills the engine, grabs Donny’s arm.

  –One more time. I’m only here to watch, maybe help out a little, from a distance. And you’re here … I have no fucking idea why you’re here. But you’re not going to get in the way.

  –Horse in a stump, says Donny. Code purple, over and out.

  He opens the door and jumps down, and the ground jumps up at him; they meet in the middle and he falls to his knees, barely keeps his face off the ground. Gets up. Looks at Mitch.

  –Shoelaces, he says. My kingdom for a muffin, he says.

  Mitch doesn’t answer, walks along the line of trucks, and Donny follows. Fifty yards up there’s an old barbed-wire fence around a clearing on a hard slope. There’s a beat-up trailer in the middle, but no people Donny can see except firefighters, all of them decked out in yellow, all of them smiling.

  Mitch leads through the gate into the clearing, nods to the rest of the team. In front of the trailer is a tight ring of redwood sprouts around a stump. Got to be the stump, Donny thinks. Eight feet high and maybe sixteen across, a couple of two-by-twelves on the uphill side forming a ramp right to the top. The fire chief is standing on the ramp in his red hat and jacket, feeding a rope through a block-and-tackle hooked to a branch overhead.

  They head up, and the chief looks from Mitch to Donny and back again.

  –Nice you could join us. You bring him for show-and-tell?

  –He’s all right, says Mitch. Thinking of signing up.

  –Sure he is.

  Donny steps to the edge of the stump. The walls are two feet thick, just enough room to stand. He sways a little, looks down into the hole, and it seems like he can see all the way to the bottom but there’s no horse to speak of.

  –You get her out already? Mitch asks.

  The chief hands Mitch a flashlight. They look down in again. The light works its way around the edge, and in one corner is a horse’s head, dark brown with a long black mane. The eyes blink at the light, but otherwise the head doesn’t move.

  –Holy shit.

  –Hamlin’s already been down—looks like one of the root cavities is rotted out, and the horse is wedged in there kind of sideways.

  –Where’s the owner?

  –Don’t know. Trailer’s empty. Probably ran when they saw the lights.

  –But, so how—

  –I’m guessing they were using the stump as a, whatever, a place to hang out, and last night or maybe this morning the brain trust decides they need a horse up here too. There was a few inches of good wood on top, but it couldn’t take the weight. Classic goose-pen cavity, except no goose.

  Mitch and Donny nod.

  –Textbook case, says Donny. Textbook horse in a stump.

  Mitch looks at him and he shuts up.

  –Why don’t you just cut her out? asks Mitch.

  –Thought about it. Too dangerous to run a saw from inside, and from outside there’s no way to tell where the horse is at. Even with a guy on the radio down in, you’d end up with steaks and gristle.

  Donny opens his mouth, gets the look from Mitch, and then there’s four quick blips from half a dozen pagers at once. This time the dispatcher isn’t laughing.

  –Eureka, McKinleyville, Blue Lake, and Fieldbrook Fire, she says. Mutual assist. Fire at Arcata Lumber, 1296 Eleventh Street.

  The chief shouts at everyone to get their gear and head back to the trucks. He walks fast down the ramp, and Mitch follows.

  –What about the horse? asks Donny.

  –Just a horse, says the chief, and half-dead already.

  –Hold on, says Donny.

  The chief stops. Looks at Donny. Looks at Mitch and shrugs.

  –You’re no use to us anyway, naked like that. Where’s your turnout?

  –Didn’t have time to hit the station. Pickup wouldn’t start.

  –So you stay here with Show-and-Tell. I’ll leave you the block-and-tackle. Your rig have a winch?

  –Yeah, but I�
��ll need somebody to run it if I’m down inside.

  –You run it. Send Show-and-Tell down in. He works out, maybe we’ll let him volunteer after all.

  Mitch grabs a pair of shovels and a cargo net off one of the trucks, asks for strapping and cribbing, and Donny wonders what those are. In three minutes everyone else is gone, and the afternoon feels darker. The mist is thicker than before, comes at them slow through the timber, and the temperature’s dropped a few degrees. The air smells like resin and diesel and damp.

  Mitch brings the pickup in close, pulls twenty feet of cable off the winch and drags it to the stump. Donny closes his eyes, almost loses his balance. He thinks about the inside of the stump, about being in there with that horse.

  –How about you let me run the winch, he says.

  –Nope. Not much room down there to work. I’m up around 210 these days, and you’re, what, 165?

  Strapping turns out to be thick lengths of canvas with steel rings at both ends, and cribbing is just big blocks of wood. They haul the gear up the ramp. Something moves at the edge of the timber, and they both look up.

  It’s people. Tweakers. Twenty of them or so, black teeth and vacant eyes and greasy hair, men and women and a couple of kids. They walk out of the trees, a stinky little army of whackjobs, and Donny watches, tries to sort out which ones are strung and which ones are coming back together, but something else is going on, something he’s never seen, as if they’re all ending a run together and set to crash.

  –Now what? asks Donny.

  –Now nothing. Now we get the horse out.

  –What about Zombieville?

  –They’ll just watch. It’s all they ever do.

  Most of the group stops around the base of the stump, but there’s one tall guy, bad mustache, no shirt and no pants, just boxers and boots and a Copenhagen hat, comes part of the way up the ramp. He says something about shadow people. Mitch says he knows, they’re a bitch. The tall guy nods, scratches himself, backs off a step.

  –I’m guessing it’s his horse, says Mitch. Not that it matters. All right. Dig her out as well as you can, and I’ll show you how to hook her up. The winch will do all the real work, and we’ll get the hell out of here.

  –How do you know it’s a girl horse?

  –Him, her, whatever.

  –Okay, says Donny. Textbook. How do I get down there, though?

  Mitch hands him the flashlight, drags the net around to the far side of the stump, pulls one side of the bundle open and kicks the rest down in. Donny takes another look at their audience. My kind of people my ass, he thinks, then remembers his own Copenhagen hat back home. They’re all mumbling, a sludgy kind of chorus, though there is one girl, not quite as gone as the rest of them. She smiles, and all her teeth are there, and she’s actually almost cute—he figures she’s the one they put in charge of forging signatures, and she’ll handle it perfectly and disappear, do crossword puzzles night and day for a week in some grotty motel.

  There’s something else about her, and Donny tries to think but nothing comes. Copenhagen yells some kind of word, and the girl calls him a spun monkey and sticks out her tongue. Donny looks at them both, nods, climbs down the net.

  He is nowhere near ready for how quiet it is inside. No sound at all except his heart and the slow breathing of the horse. The smell, too, centuries of rotten wood cooped up: not all that bad a smell, really, just earth and old wood and wet, but dense and a little sour.

  There are whorls in the walls like faces, and the ground is soft, springy almost, a couple of feet of duff. He waits for the horse to do something, whinny or snort, but nothing happens. He shines his flashlight, sees flecks of gold in the horse’s coat, a small white star on its forehead. He decides for no reason that Mitch must be right, it must be a girl horse. Then the whole head lifts, the eyes blink, and the head sets back down.

  He turns the flashlight off, waits for his eyes to adjust. There’s something like voices but it’s hard to tell if they’re real. A slight shadow passes overhead. He looks up, sees Mitch in silhouette.

  –How goes it?

  –Fucking weird.

  –How’s the horse?

  –Alive, but pretty tired. Can’t move at all.

  –Been down there all night, I bet. Dehydrated. First things first, though. Shovel, incoming.

  Donny jumps back as the shovel comes blade-down.

  –Not funny, he says.

  –A little funny. You probably won’t need it right away—just scoop the duff with your hands.

  –What if the horse freaks out?

  –She will most likely kick you to death. So try not to freak her out.

  Donny moves the shovel out of the way, decides to make friends. He hunches down close, reaches out, expects the horse to flinch but she doesn’t. He traces the star with his fingers, tells her everything will be fine. The horse closes her eyes.

  He gets started on the top layer of duff, piles it against the far side. He hears a shout, almost definitely real this time, and stops, listens, but nothing else comes. More scooping. He wonders when Allen’s getting home from Marin. He thinks of the tweaker girl, pictures her face, tries to remember the rest of her but can’t quite bring it back.

  When the horse’s neck is free, he grabs the shovel, and it’s awkward work. He tries not to touch her with the blade, but now the duff is packed tight, almost like regular soil, and he has to lean in hard. He starts to sweat, and it feels good, sweating the beer out drop by drop.

  He can see part of the chest, and still the horse is quiet. He pats her on the neck, takes another long look. Beautiful animal. The kind you could ride away on. Again the shadow, again Mitch’s head, his voice echoey and strange.

  –Everything okay?

  –Swell. Up there?

  –Restless natives, the usual.

  –Thought I heard somebody yell.

  –Yeah. The dude in the hat. His girlfriend tried to climb the ramp and he pulled her off.

  –Fun bunch.

  –The horse?

  –Doing okay. I’ve got the neck clear. I think maybe she has one leg folded up under her chest.

  –Good. Get that leg free, and you’ll be able to hook the strapping under it. Here comes a walkie-talkie.

  Donny waits, sees it coming, catches it just off the ground. Turns it on, listens to it pop.

  –For whenever she’s ready to go, says Mitch. I already put it on the same channel as mine. You need anything, just give a shout.

  Back to the digging. Donny gets a flash of the tweaker chick, all of her, nice curves, wonders if he’s remembering or just wanting. It’s darker now, and he turns on the flashlight, props it up on the far side. The faces, their mouths, and there’s something buzzing around him, something off balance but he keeps at it. Sore spots in places on his hands, be blisters by tomorrow. He leans against the wall for a second, straightens back up, and where his hand was there’s a sweat stain on the wood, wings spread out like a thunderbird, and he wonders what he ever did to piss it off so bad.

  Twenty minutes or so, and he’s got a hole dug under the horse’s armpit, legpit, whatever you call it. The ground’s too hard for any more digging. The horse is getting twitchy, swings her head around, snuffs at him. He keys the walkie-talkie, tells Mitch to come down and take a look.

  –Can’t. They’re starting to get interested in the pickup. I’m down there thirty seconds, there’ll be nothing left but bones.

  –So …

  –So it’s your show. More stuff incoming.

  Mitch tosses down a half-dozen lengths of strapping, holds up another.

  –As far down the chest as you can, he says, and hook the rings to the shackle.

  –What shackle?

  –The one at the end of the rope I’ll pass you in a second. Get at least two straps in place to spread the load. I’ll pull the net out so nothing snags when we start the winch.

  –There’s not really room for two pieces around her chest.

  –The neck,
then, if you have to. Here comes the cribbing. Wedge them in under her after each pull so we don’t lose any ground.

  Mitch kicks four wood blocks down in, draws the net up and disappears, comes back with the end of the rope. He feeds the shackle to Donny, disappears again. Donny talks to the horse—baseball scores, dirty jokes, the tweaker girl’s sweet ass. He comes in close, gets a piece of strapping cinched around the horse’s chest, hooks another around her neck.

  Which looks like a terrible idea, but there’s nowhere else to put it. He sits back on his haunches, wipes his forehead. The horse looks fine, just really tired, and the tweakers have never done anything in their life to deserve an animal like this. What kind of fuck lets his horse fall in a stump? He looks around, presses his body against the far wall, keys the mike and tells Mitch they’re good for liftoff.

  The rope goes taut, and the strapping’s tight at the neck but the horse doesn’t seem to be choking. Donny hunches down, wonders which parts of his body they’ll find if the rope snaps. There’s a lurch as the horse comes six inches out, and he shouts for Mitch to stop.

  The next hour is pull a little, lay the cribbing, adjust the strapping, pull a little more. The flashlight is down to a low glow in the corner but Donny’s eyes can see like magic. The sweat stain is still there, bigger than before though that makes no sense.

  The horse’s shoulders are covered with dirt and grime, but the more Donny can see of her, the more beautiful she is. There’s still the buzzing around him. Another pull, and the horse is halfway out. Donny grabs the walkie-talkie, tells Mitch to hang on. He strokes the horse’s face, says everything’s cool, says they’re almost done and how about a little ride afterwards? He pictures himself, full gallop, reaches an arm down and the girl swings up behind him, bareback and away and maybe that’s the trick: those memories, melted and slumped, you don’t burn them, you just ride away.

  He gets another piece of strapping around the horse’s chest, hooks the rings to the shackle. The walkie-talkie hisses and spits, and Mitch asks what’s the delay. Donny looks up, sees a dozen heads in silhouette. He nods, says, Okay, brother, fire it up.

  The rope strains and he hears the far staccato grind of the winch. The flashlight goes out and he grabs the horse’s neck, pulls, fumbles the walkie-talkie, the horse stretches forward, a jolt as her body comes all the way out and then hinges downward as she’s lifted, the hindquarters swaying beneath, the body swinging against Donny, pinning him to the wall, the horse clear of the ground and Donny tries to guide her up but she spins and he’s looking at all four hooves and he covers his face and ducks.