Boy in the Box

by Marc E. Fitch

  “You sure you want to eat here?” Conner asked, but Michael was already thumbing through a plastic menu on the table. Conner gave up and looked at Jonathan. “You want to go get some beers?” Jonathan nodded and they walked to the bar. The bartender took his time coming down. He looked worse up close, lips cracked, the skin of his arms marked with puncture wounds.

  “Kitchen open?” Conner asked.

  “Sure thing, you just let me know what you want.” They ordered two pitchers of beer and paid cash. Conner left a good tip, which seemed to soften the bartender up a bit.

  “You boys just get in from out of town?” he said.

  Conner settled into his social easiness, like water around any obstruction. “Yeah, we were supposed to meet up with Bill Flood, but we can’t find him anywhere.”

  “Bill Flood? What do you want with that old bastard?” The bartender was practically laughing.

  “We rented his cabin up in Coombs’ Gulch. He was supposed to take us out there tonight to open it up, but he isn’t home and isn’t answering the phone.”

  “You guys ain’t trying to hunt up there, are you?”

  “Why?”

  “Place is dead as a grave. I don’t think anybody’s shot anything up there in a decade. Bill done took you for a ride if you’re paying good money to go hunt the Gulch.”

  “Really?” Conner said. “We did pretty good last time we were here.”

  “When was that?”

  “’Bout ten years ago.”

  “Well, things have changed up there,” he said. “Listen, friend. Don’t give Bill Flood your money. I got a couple buddies here that will take you out to some real hunting spots, show you around a bit. They’re kinda like guides.” He gestured down to the end of the bar. Four thick-faced men with small shiny eyes raised their beer glasses to them, and Conner nodded back. One had a big, red beard, hands thick as a bear’s paws and sweat pouring down the sides of his head. He smiled and stared at them. Jonathan felt a deep discomfort in his stomach. The bartender gestured over his shoulder. “Larry here knows these woods better than anybody. Takes folks out hunting all the time.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Conner said. “But I think we’ll take our chances as it is. Have you seen Bill at all?”

  The bartender suddenly cooled, seemingly offended at the rejection of his offer. “Nah, I ain’t seen him since last night when he was tying one on. He’s probably up at that cabin right now, drunk out of his mind.” The bartender leaned over the bar, in close, and Jonathan could suddenly smell him, flesh and sweat. “Listen, you guys don’t want to go up there. Last group that went up there, they lost a couple guys. Got all turned around; two of them died of exposure, stuck outside all night. You boys don’t want to go there, ’specially if you don’t know what you’re doing. They’re gonna pave over that whole section of forest next year. In my opinion, it can’t come soon enough.”

  Michael came to the bar and interrupted the awkward moment, changing the subject to food. They ordered burgers and wings, loading up for the night, and then took their seats, pouring out draught beer into pint glasses.

  “So that was interesting,” Conner said.

  “What happened?” Michael said.

  “They pretty much warned us off of Coombs’ Gulch.”

  “Fuck them,” Michael said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jonathan said. “We just need to get this done. We need to find Bill.”

  “There must be somebody who knows where he is.”

  “Like the guy said, he’s probably at the cabin right now, drunk off his ass.” The bartender talked with the good ol’ boys down at the end of the bar, occasionally glancing at their table, probably trying to figure out how they could make some money off of the newcomers aside from their failed ‘hunting guide’ offer.

  They ate simple food, nothing the kitchen could screw up too badly. Conner kept trying to call Bill Flood.

  Michael went up to use the bathroom at the shadowed end of the bar, and Jonathan sat dazed, staring into his beer. Conner was sending Bill an email telling him they were looking for him. Then there was a commotion, activity that bled into Jonathan’s vision from the corner of his eye. Michael, one arm extended, shoved a big, red-bearded lurcher back into his barstool. It seemed to happen in a separate moment in time, the rest of the world waiting to catch up. Then everything went fast and loud. The others pushed Michael back against the wall, and someone reached over and grabbed him by the shirt collar. A quick punch was thrown. Beer glasses spilled and broke. Michael threw a fist over someone’s shoulder, breaking a nose. Jonathan and Conner were up, pushing chairs out of their way, rushing toward the melee at the end of the bar. The bartender got out a piece of pipe. Everything was hazy and smoky and blurred. They rushed into a mess of arms and shoulders that felt like rock, pushing them off Michael. A fist the size of a ham caught Jonathan above the eye. He swung out with a left, and then a battery of hands and arms flew at him; he ducked his head from the barrage. An arm wrapped around his neck from behind and squeezed, and Jonathan suddenly couldn’t inhale. He panicked, trying to pull the thick arm away from his neck. Jonathan pushed the big man back against the bar and rammed his lower back into the wood, punched him in the groin and nearly tore his own ear off pulling out of the chokehold. Jonathan stared the man in the eye for a moment – black, glossy marbles, dimmed with alcohol, a black-and-white goatee that reached his Adam’s apple, a look of violent intensity in his face – and then punched him square in the mouth. His fist scraped against whiskers and ripped across teeth, and the sheer violence of it suddenly made Jonathan want to quit and just take the beating. Conner and Michael struggled against Larry and two bigger, meaner-looking men, and then Jonathan saw the bartender, with his piece of pipe, wrap one of them around the throat and pull them off Michael. He grabbed them by their collars and pulled them away as if it were an old game he was accustomed to playing, like a woman with a lot of dogs who occasionally has to keep them from killing each other. His voice rang across the bar, and suddenly it all seemed to stop. Jonathan was tossed to the ground and landed hard on the old wood floor. He could see legs and jeans and boots and heard the bartender telling them to get the fuck out. “I’ve had enough of this shit every night, Larry! Get your shit and get out. Got enough trouble here!”

  “Fuck yourself, Andy. You’re no fucking good anyway.” Larry was practically lunging at the bartender, who held up his pipe, ready to strike.

  It was quiet, but there was electricity in the air; they were all panting, eyes bugging out of their heads, hearts pounding, blood pulsing, pulling at their clothes to put them back in their proper place, waiting for the next move. Jonathan stood up so he was ready, and the three of them stood facing the five locals with a pipe-wielding bartender holding the tentative peace.

  Finally, Larry looked away from Michael and back to the bartender. Larry was bleeding from the nose, his red mustache and beard looked wet and tinged with darkness. “Fine, Andy. We’ll leave. But I didn’t lay a finger on that fucker. He hit first. You saw that.”

  “You know what you said, Larry. I can’t be having this shit on a nightly basis with you.”

  Larry pointed a finger at Michael. “This shit ain’t over. You fellas better watch your back.”

  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Michael said.

  “You all are strangers here. Don’t forget that shit. Enjoy Coombs’, you peckerwood pussies.”

  Larry and his friends shouldered through and went out the rickety door into the night. Jonathan finally let down his guard and breathed and started taking account of any damage. He’d been hit a few times; he just wasn’t sure how bad yet. He rubbed a hand across the side of his face. His knuckles were bleeding where they’d cut across teeth. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, and his left ear felt like the skin had rubbed off. A knot formed on his forehead above his right eye. Michael
and Conner were in similar shape. No missing teeth, no apparent broken bones, everyone tuned up and coming down and restless. Michael fumed.

  Conner thanked the bartender, but he only stared, pipe in hand. “You don’t get too welcomed up here by getting into a fight with those boys. Some of them are all right. Some of them ain’t. Just sayin’. You boys best be finding Bill Flood and get the hell out of town.”

  Defeat began to set in, and they sat back down at the table, still wanting to be anywhere but here.

  “What the fuck happened?” Conner asked.

  “He said something,” Michael said. “He was saying… I don’t know. Strange things. He threatened us.”

  “So what?” Conner said. “It’s not worth pissing off guys like that up here.”

  Jonathan could now see that Michael was drunker than he let on. He’d always had the ability to hide it well, his glazed-over eyes the only telltale sign.

  “We’ll be lucky if we go up there and they don’t kill us in our sleep.”

  “We have guns,” Michael said.

  “They probably got a thousand guns!” Conner said. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “We can’t afford to be making mistakes. We can’t afford to be remembered. We can’t afford to have the police talking to us. Don’t lose focus on why we’re here. It’s certainly not to fuck around with the local wildlife.”

  Jonathan watched the bartender for a time. They had pretty much chased out all his business for the night. He stood up and went to the bar to pay the tab. The bartender looked him up and down and seemed repulsed.

  Jonathan paid the tab and tipped him a twenty. “Sorry about all that,” he said. “But thank you for not letting us get killed.”

  The bartender’s eyes burned bright and huge beneath his long hair, as if he were riding some insane beast that only he could see. “I can’t stop you from getting killed, friend. I can only stop you from getting killed in here.”

  Jonathan nodded. “Do you know how to get to Bill Flood’s cabin? It’s just we have nowhere to stay tonight and if someone could show us how to get there…”

  “Never been there myself. Never had reason to. Place isn’t any good these days anyway. But there might be someone I can call. Bill’s good friends with this guy Daryl Teague. I know he knows how to get out there.”

  Jonathan tipped him another ten. “It would be a big help,” he said. “It would get us out of here anyway.”

  He took the ten and said, “Probably for the best then,” and walked to the phone.

  Conner groaned the second they walked outside to wait for Daryl Teague. All four tires of his Suburban were slashed, and the SUV sat on its rims like a beached whale. The night grew longer and longer. In ancient times it would all have been a warning of disaster, the various problems, big and small. The rhythm of the trip was all wrong. The ancients would have turned back by now, knowing that the time for this undertaking was not right with the gods, but then, they had no other time, no other way.

  “What the hell do we do now?” Michael said.

  “We have to keep going,” Conner said. “There’s no choice.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Daryl Teague was abnormally huge. He arrived in a Ford F-150 about the same time the wrecker showed up from Cerutti’s Tire and Auto shop, and the truck righted itself when he stepped out of the driver’s seat and onto the pavement. The bartender didn’t offer to call the police and Conner didn’t ask him to. Conner was deeply angry. He folded his arms behind his head like a runner at the end of a marathon and sighed.

  Daryl Teague had the air of a man who did not give a shit about anything and was too big for anyone to make him. Daryl’s pinky and ring finger were missing from his left hand – something they saw immediately as he brought a cigarette repeatedly to his mouth. He noticed their eyes watching his hand and held up his three-fingers and wiggled them, smiling, seemingly proud. He said he lost them from frostbite – the result of driving during the winter with the window down while holding a cigarette. “My fingers went numb and I didn’t even realize it,” he said. “It gets real cold up here.” That was his story, but they all knew it was untrue. How could someone not realize his fingers were being frozen black? It was impossible. Conner and Jonathan just smiled and nodded, anyway.

  “Why didn’t you just roll up your window?” Michael asked.

  Daryl Teague smiled. “Don’t want the truck to smell like smoke.” For a man that size, everything could be a joke. He barely took a breath without cigarette smoke. Daryl raised his three remaining fingers to his lips and removed the second cigarette he had finished since arriving at The Forge. They could smell the inside of the truck from ten feet away, ash and wet dirt.

  Mario from Cerutti’s Tire and Auto gave the SUV a look over and was then on the phone with his brother at the shop. A tall, bent man with a permanent Italian five-o’clock shadow, he finally walked over to the group. “I don’t have this size tire in stock right now. It’ll take me twenty-four hours to get them up here. Gotta ship them in. That’s as quick as it can be done. Everything’s closed now anyway, so I can’t order them till the morning. I’ll tow it tonight, put them on as soon as they get in.”

  It was nearly eight o’clock at night now. They needed to be hiking through Coombs’ Gulch by six in the morning to keep pace with Conner’s plan.

  Jonathan and the brothers turned to a small huddle. “I don’t see how this is going to work,” Jonathan said. “This just isn’t happening.”

  “We need to stick to the plan. Everything can be fixed, paid for. It’s just a bump in the road.”

  “It’s a bit more than a bump. I got a bad feeling about all this.”

  “Did you ever have a good feeling about this? Don’t get superstitious.”

  Daryl approached like the shadow of a mountain in the night, and they all turned and looked up at him. “Listen, I know you guys had a deal with Bill. He told me about it a few days ago. If you all want, I can drive you out there so you can get started on your trip.” He inhaled deeply on another cigarette. “Tell you what. Leave the keys with me. When the truck is fixed, me and my buddy will drive it out to the cabin and drop it off for ya; how’s that sound?”

  Conner was still rolling his eyes in anger.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll work,” Michael said. “We’ll pay you for your trouble.”

  Daryl smiled. “Damn right. I’m sure Bill is still out there right now, anyway. It’s been a while since anybody rented the place, so he was going up to give it a once-over. Can’t say I’m surprised he forgot to come back. Load your gear in the back.” He looked at the three of them and nodded at Michael. “You, big fella, you grab the front seat, and you two smaller guys can squeeze in the back.”

  Mario was waiting on a final decision, saying he had another call. Daryl seemed to consider the three outsiders for a moment. “Don’t worry yourselves about the car; I ain’t going nowhere with it. You pay, you’ll get it delivered. Hundred bucks will do it.”

  They all ponied up and paid him, then moved their stuff out of the Suburban and into the bed of Daryl’s truck. Mario hooked up the winch and pulled the SUV up onto the wrecker.

  Conner and Jonathan had to bend their legs and practically lie against each other to fit into the back of Daryl Teague’s Ford. Daryl drove with the window down, his three-fingered left hand hanging out the side of the truck, a tiny cigarette clutched between them. They all shivered in the cold. The cigarette glowed in the night air.

  “You boys look a little banged up. Rough night?”

  “Long day,” Michael said. “Couple assholes.”

  “Huh. Larry can be that way sometimes. Him and his group, that’s their way. People up here get territorial, is all. Especially now with the new highway system coming through. Gonna be lots of development in the coming years. Lot of people were pissed at Bill for agreeing to sell his land. He was standing b
etween the town and the whole project. They weren’t going to be able to build without his thousand acres in Coombs’ Gulch. They offered him enough money that he’s gonna move outta Pasternak and probably buy a mansion somewhere down south.”

  “Good for him,” Conner said, returning to his friendly, winning self. “We figured we’d get one last trip in while it was still here.”

  “You know there hasn’t been much wildlife out there for a while, right?”

  “It’s more for posterity’s sake,” Conner said. “Old times we had there.”

  Daryl nodded and grunted. “I couldn’t help but notice you fellas had tents and hiking gear in there. Just a friendly warning, you gotta be real careful up in Coombs’ Gulch when you’re hiking. Bill usually tells people not to wander too far from the cabin. People get turned around up there, suddenly don’t know where they are, and next thing you know we’re calling out search and rescue to find some weekend warriors lost in the woods.”

  “The bartender said a couple guys got lost up there a few years back?”

  “Yup. That’s the case. Two of them died of exposure. They was here later in the season than you guys. Snow was tough that year and they were stuck in it. Still, it was a rough scene when they were finally found.”

  “How so?”

  “Whelp. There was four of them at first. Hunters, like yourselves, but they kept pushing farther out because they weren’t finding any deer. So they pushed farther and got turned around. You know the general layout of the Gulch, right?” Daryl said, and they all grunted in approval. “Looks simple enough, right? North to south, ridged with mountains to the east and west. Seems like it should be easy to navigate, right? Well, one thing the rescuers found when they were out looking for those boys is because of the way the two mountain ridges look from the valley; they’re practically mirror images of each other. Makes east look like west, north like south. People get all turned around and that’s what happened to those guys.”