The Marauders

by Tom Cooper

  “Lucky man,” the doctor told Wes.

  Now Wes stepped out of the elevator and walked slowly down the hall. He kept his eyes carefully in front of him, trying not to look into any of the hospital rooms with the open doors. He felt the sickly, ill-omened stares of the patients from their beds.

  When he entered the room his father lifted his head off the pillow and looked at the door. Then he laid his head back but his drug-clouded eyes stayed on him. Wes saw that there were tubes in his nose and on his arms and that his face was drawn and haggard.

  He stepped to the bed, wondering if he should kiss him on the cheek like he used to when he was a kid. But he only rested his hand briefly on his father’s shoulder. Beneath the overstarched hospital gown his body felt thin and frail, on the verge of breaking.

  Wes took a chair from the corner of the room and drew it near the bed and sat.

  “What’re they saying?” Wes asked, picking at his eyebrow.

  “I got three hours to live,” his father said.

  They were quiet for a time.

  “I feel bad,” Wes said.

  “Don’t.”

  “My phone was off.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t pay my bill.”

  “Smooth move.”

  The television was on, a show about a pretty blond detective woman with a foul mouth and a fedora. They watched the television for a while as if deeply engrossed.

  “I took the money,” his father said, eyes still on the television.

  Wes nodded though his father couldn’t have seen him the way his face was turned.

  “The guy came in here yesterday and I just signed right there on the dotted line.”

  “Well,” Wes said.

  “I don’t even want to see this bill,” his father said. “Soon as I see it, I’ll have another heart attack. Then they’ll bill me again.”

  “Want anything?” Wes asked. “There’s a vending machine in the hall.”

  “Naw. I’m all right.”

  They stared at the television. A commercial for something called a discreet pocket catheter. Xylophone music, a middle-aged man playing Frisbee in the park with a trio of young women in halter tops.

  “You can leave if you want,” his father said. “You probably got things to do.”

  “I’m watching this.”

  “This? The commercial?”

  “The show.”

  “You waitin’ for the show to come back on?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You like that show?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What is it? Just some gal in a funny hat solving mysteries?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “She’s pretty good-lookin’.”

  “Yeah.” Wes rubbed his sweating palms up and down the thighs of his jeans.

  When the show came back on they watched it for a while.

  “Huh?” Wes’s father said.

  Wes picked at his eyebrow. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Making a lot of noise over there.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “About to have a fit in that chair.”

  “I’m just sitting here.”

  “Well, I guess you probably can leave. I’m getting tired anyway. Don’t want to keep you.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I’ll probably take a nap anyway. These drugs they got me on.”

  Wes got up and went to the door.

  “Hey,” his father said.

  Wes turned.

  “I know I can be difficult to deal with.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Bring me back something to eat next time? If you don’t have nothin’ planned?”

  “I’m coming tomorrow. That’s my plan.”

  “A sandwich from Sully’s or something. Hospital food’s like poison. Probably is. So they can keep me here and bill me more.”

  “I’ll bring you something from Sully’s,” Wes said.

  “Hey, Wes.”

  Wes waited.

  “I’m trying. You know?”

  Wes nodded. “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  COSGROVE AND HANSON

  There was so much marijuana hanging in the abandoned shed that even Hanson in his addled state admitted something had to be done. They’d never smoke or sell this much. Not in a million years. He called his old buddy Greenfoot who called another acquaintance and within minutes the phone in Hanson’s motel room rang. It was half past ten Friday morning, the first of October, and from the nook table Cosgrove listened to Hanson answering the guy’s questions.

  “Maybe fifty,” Hanson said. “Give or take five or ten.”

  He paced as far as the cord of the old-fashioned Bakelite telephone would allow and after a minute sat on the edge of the bed and winked at Cosgrove.

  “Yeah,” Hanson said. “Pounds.”

  The man on the other end of the line must have laughed because Hanson laughed too. “Yes sir,” he said, “I’m telling you, every aspect.”

  Cosgrove and Hanson hauled the bags out of the shed to the shoulder of the road and stacked them in the bed of Hanson’s truck. By the time all of the bags were in the back, they were heaped nearly a foot over the top.

  Above the heat-hazed treeline hung a trace-paper ghost of moon.

  “Craziest goddamn thing ever,” Cosgrove told Hanson. He wiped his sopping forehead with the back of his hand.

  “Got a better idea?”

  “Yeah. A U-Haul.”

  “You ever driven a U-Haul in New Orleans?”

  “I’ll drive. I can drive a U-Haul.”

  “It’s like Uzbekistan, man. Every aspect. And the kamikaze drivers. Mad Max Beyond the Fuckin’ Thunderdome.”

  Hanson put his hands on his hips and studied the heap of bags. He climbed into the truck bed and sat on the pile, trying to squash it down. “I’ll drive the U-Haul,” Cosgrove said.

  “I’m not going off some bridge in a U-Haul full of marijuana.”

  “You got a tarp at least?”

  “A tarp?” Hanson said, straightening his rodeo buckle. “Come on.”

  “A tarp’s a normal thing. People have tarps.”

  “What would I be doing with a tarp?”

  “Let’s get a tarp at least,” Cosgrove said. “Cover this shit up.”

  “These bags weigh plenty. They ain’t going nowhere.”

  “This beats every goddamn bit of stupidity I’ve ever seen,” Cosgrove said.

  “You’re like a fuckin’ eighty-year-old granny, man. My tag’s up to date. Brake lights’re fine. Aspects check out.”

  Cosgrove let out a contemptuous breath.

  Hanson drove past corroded mobile homes reared on girders, forlorn storefronts with out-of-business and for-rent signs hung in the dirty windows. Soon the only evidence of civilization was the road itself, the occasional passing car, a weather-faded billboard. JESUS IS LORD STUMP REMOVAL, said one. JIMMY DIAMOND BROUSARD, THE LORD’S LAWYER, said another.

  They passed bogs of cattails and purple-blooming hyacinths, groves of sand pine, bright wildflowers among which tiny burnt-orange butterflies flitted up like blizzards of confetti. On the road’s shoulder a phalanx of vultures hop-skipped around something black and rubbery. Cosgrove saw white fangs gleaming among the scrapple of entrails. An alligator.

  Cosgrove glanced at the speedometer. “Slow down,” he told Hanson.

  “Going fifty.”

  “Limit’s forty-five.”

  “I just saw fifty.”

  They approached another traffic sign. “Forty-five, look,” Cosgrove said. “Wake the fuck up.”

  Hanson eased up on the gas. It took them thirty minutes to reach the highway, Cosgrove turning his head every half minute to check the bags, Hanson hunched over the wheel like an octogenarian. Billboards for chiropractors and ambulance-chasing lawyers turned to advertisements for strip clubs and oyster bars. Soon they passed the Louis Armstrong
airport, a plane flying so low over the highway that Cosgrove saw the silhouettes of the heads in the windows.

  In Metairie the traffic thickened, jalopies lumbering, pickups weaving with suicidal speed in and out of lanes. A few police cars trundled serenely along, the cops oblivious or indifferent. Maybe they were drunk and stoned themselves. Enjoying below-the-dash blowjobs.

  Cosgrove turned again and checked the bags. Still there, still secure. Still enough to land him in prison for a long time.

  Hanson grinned his crooked grin at Cosgrove. “Easy Street.”

  “Just watch the road,” Cosgrove said.

  “Best fuckin’ driver you ever seen,” Hanson said. “Cool as an Eskimo’s tits.”

  New Orleans reared into view, the crumbling brick factories, the gray and black skyscrapers wreathed in clouds of septic smog, the behemoth of the Superdome. Clustered under the highway were derelict tenements, many of them burnt down or gutted, most spray-painted with the National Guard’s cruciform symbols. The ominous shorthand of numbers and abbreviations.

  For what had to be the hundredth time Cosgrove looked around at the truck bed. A bag leapfrogged as the Dodge bucked up and down the potholed highway. Now, with terrifying inexorability, it slid toward the pickup gate.

  Cosgrove watched. “There’s a bag,” he said, horror-struck. “Sliding.”

  Hanson, hand on top of his camouflage cap, glanced wide-eyed at the rearview mirror.

  A large white delivery van now rode behind them, its bumper nearly touching theirs.

  “Who’s this cocksucker?” Hanson said.

  “Watch that pothole coming up.”

  “Whole fuckin’ city’s a pothole.”

  Hanson crashed over the crater and the truck went airborne. Cosgrove watched as the bag leapt like a skydiver out of the truck bed. The truck slammed back down and bucked on its shocks. Behind them the delivery van whipped out of its lane and the driver punched the horn. The bag tumbled crazily about the macadam and other cars veered out of the way, an angry chorus of horns.

  An eighties-era brown Tercel rolled over the bag and it burst open in an explosion of bright-green leaves.

  “Bag,” Cosgrove managed finally.

  Hanson looked at Cosgrove.

  “A bag flew out,” Cosgrove said.

  Hanson glanced at the rearview mirror with his mouth agape. “Should we go back?” he said.

  “Go, goddamn it, go.”

  They sat silently, tensely, waiting for the sound of sirens.

  After a while Hanson let out a little laugh. “Somebody’s gonna have one fuck of a party tonight,” he said.

  Still no sirens.

  This was New Orleans, after all.

  On Royal Street, Hanson parked in front of a pastel purple Creole town house: rococo ironwork galleries, tall shuttered windows, an enormous mint-green door with a gargoyle-headed brass knocker. Drunken tourists staggered along the sidewalk. A trio of frat boys wearing Florida Seminoles T-shirts. An older man with an Asian girl in a Catholic school uniform. A grizzled construction worker wearing a joke-shop cap with foam titties on the front. All of them carried beer bottles or to-go cups.

  When Cosgrove got out of the truck he was ready to kneel and kiss the ground. He might have if it weren’t so filthy: dirty Mardi Gras beads and petrified dog turds and cigarette ends.

  A warm breeze carried the smells of garbage and piss, of seafood and chicory-spiced coffee, of horseshit and rotten fruit.

  The fetid spice box of New Orleans.

  Hanson stepped to the town house door and rang the bell. A moment later a shirtless young man stepped out onto the upper balcony and peered down. He was crunching on a lollypop and flicked the stem into the street before ducking out of view.

  Cosgrove and Hanson waited next to the truck. Down the street a horse-drawn carriage trundled toward them, the horse’s hooves clopping on the cobbles. A skinny black man with a top hat shading his eyes gently worked the strop. Six or seven tourists sat on the benches of the bouncing carriage. They gawked at Cosgrove and Hanson as if they were part of the scenery.

  A Japanese man lifted his cell phone and snapped a picture. Cosgrove stared him down.

  When the kid came down he introduced himself as Benji. He saw the truck and the massive heap of bags and started to laugh. “You guys drove from the bayou like this?” he asked. He looked one way down the street and then the other.

  “Just like this,” Hanson said proudly, thumbs hooked over his canvas belt.

  “God this shit smells,” the kid said, and laughed again.

  Cosgrove hadn’t expected someone this young. He was no more than twenty-five, maybe closer to twenty. A boy. Good-looking in an American way, with sandy hair shagged over his eyes and suburban teeth. If Cosgrove passed him in the street, he’d figure him a trust fund kid, a Tulane student.

  “Dude,” the kid said, still marveling at the truck. “I’m gonna put this in my fuckin’ memoir.”

  Benji and Hanson carried the bags into the town house while Cosgrove stood guard beside the truck. When they had all the bags in the town house they went together inside.

  It was a high-ceilinged place that smelled of candle wax and book dust. Antique cherrywood furniture, objets d’art. A tall window gazed out onto a brick-walled garden presided over by a giant black olive tree, dozens of Tinkertoy birds chittering in the branches.

  And, amid all of this, Cosgrove and Hanson’s trash bags of marijuana heaped in the middle of the harlequin floor.

  The kid reached into his pocket and drew out a Swiss Army knife and cut open a bag and pulled out a handful of leaves. He brought them to his face and sniffed. He twirled a sprig between his fingers and studied it.

  “A lot of these pistils, still green,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Pulled early.”

  “I smoked the stuff,” Hanson said. “Prime shit. Every aspect.”

  “No doubt, dude. Still wet though. Needs to be cured.”

  Hanson stayed quiet. Beside him Cosgrove stood with his arms crossed. There was something about the kid he didn’t like. His ironic smirk. Of course Cosgrove was jealous. You would figure their positions reversed, a kid this age doing the grunt work instead of the other way around.

  “Yeah, gonna have to cure this stuff,” the kid said. “Can’t sell it this way.”

  Hanson took off his cap, stroked back his ponytail, pulled the cap back on.

  “You fertilize?” Benji asked.

  “Yeah,” Hanson said, sounding like a school kid guessing at the right answer.

  The kid reached into his pocket and brought out another Dum Dum sucker. He unwrapped the lollypop and stuck it in his mouth, cheek bulging. “How often you fertilize?”

  Hanson swallowed, mused. A vague wigwag of his hand. “Every other week.”

  “You shouldn’t overfertilize.”

  Hanson shrugged.

  “How often you water?”

  “About the same amount.”

  “Tell me again. How long you been doing this?”

  “Couple’a years.”

  For a moment Benji only stared at Hanson, switching the sucker from one side of his mouth to the other, the hard candy clacking against his teeth. “Where’d you steal this shit?” he asked.

  Cosgrove glanced at the door, wondered how long it would take to run out.

  “Nobody ever said that now,” Hanson said.

  “I’m saying it.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “If somebody machine-guns my place tonight? Yeah.”

  “Nobody’s gonna do that now.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody followed you.”

  “I’m just gonna tell you the aspects straight. We found this place out in Barataria Bay.”

  The kid waited.

  “There’s an island out there full of this shit. So much, whoever grows it won’t notice anything. That’s how much.”

  “Out in Barataria Bay
.”

  “Way out there. Middle of nowhere.”

  From outside came the sound of little twittering birds.

  “And nobody knows about this,” the kid said.

  “You ask the people who called you. I’m a careful motherfucker.”

  “You drove from the bayou with all this in the back of your truck. And you’re a careful motherfucker.”

  Hanson clutched one-handed onto his belt buckle. “I know what I’m doing.”

  The kid considered this, then looked at Cosgrove. “What’s your story?”

  “Just standing here,” Cosgrove said.

  “That’s not a story.”

  “Look, man, I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Neither do I. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “He’s telling you like it is,” Cosgrove said.

  “And I’m just supposed to believe you.”

  “Kid,” Cosgrove said. “Stop talking to me like I’m your dog.”

  Benji threw up his hands. “I’m asking what I gotta ask,” he said. “Put yourself in my shoes.”

  Benji and Cosgrove stared at one another. Then the kid sighed and shook his head and squatted. He ripped open another bag and brought a fistful of the bright green leaves to his face and inhaled deeply. He picked off some drier leaves and rolled them into a nugget between his thumb and forefinger and then he went to the mantel where he opened a wooden box and took out a small one-hitter of varicolored glass. He stuffed the nugget in the bowl and lit it and held the smoke. He waited a beat, exhaled, looked at Hanson and then at Cosgrove.

  “This belong to the twins?”

  “Twins?” Hanson said.

  “I’ve smoked this before. Real mellow high. Loud but mellow.”

  “Maybe it’s from the same seed.”

  “Five or six people in the country with this strain. If even that. Rest is mixed up with Green Crack and Agent Orange.”

  “Don’t know anything about that.”

  “Shit’s fertilized just the same. Same color. Same hairs. Same everything.”

  “We don’t know any twins,” Cosgrove said.

  “Let’s not shit each other,” Benji said.

  Cosgrove and Hanson were silent.

  “Two of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met. Rob them blind if I could.”

  “Yeah, we don’t know any twins,” Hanson said.