CENSUS_What Lurks Beneath

by Marshall Cobb

  Deputy Evans stopped doodling and instead tapped her pen against the notepad a few times, creating small dark splotches on the face of the scruffy dog. “I think it would be best if you called the main number just as you did previously Mr. Reynolds.”

  “Oh, I just thought since you already knew about what had happened out here…”

  “I can’t say that I actually know what did, or didn’t happen out there Mr. Reynolds.” Deputy Evans immediately felt a bit guilty about the harshness of her tone. “That being said, please ask for me, and if I’m on duty and available I will be happy to come out and file a report. And don’t forget about your laptop.”

  CHAPTER NINE: Huisache

  A month later, in the oppressive heat of the July sun, Dave busily swung his pick-ax again, and was rewarded with a clean, cleaving sound that indicated he’d at last cut through the root growing sideways from the remains of the huisache tree. For good measure, Adam used his small shovel as a spear of sorts as he joined in the work.

  Dave put down the pick-ax and smiled as he took in the scene. He was working on his farm with his son beside him. They were doing phys- ical, tangible good works. All of his anguish and worries had not just been tamped down; they had instead vanished once he had answered the nagging mental itch that kept calling him to return to the farm.

  Dave looked over at the front loader of his tractor and the length of tow chain wrapped around it in anticipation of the next step in the huisache removal process. The tractor was needed because it wasn’t enough to simply cut down the trunk of the weed-like tree. No, that just compelled it to redouble its efforts at spreading sideways and, like Medusa, one skinny stalk became six. To actually get rid of the pesky tree, one had to dig around the trunk and, once the side roots were severed, attach a length of chain around the exposed top portion of the taproot. As there was no human yet created who could pull a huisache taproot out of the ground, the chain was wrapped around the front-end loader of the tractor, which was then hoisted in the air, pulling at the tightening chain, and its nemesis, the taproot.

  A standard issue, six-to-eight-foot-tall huisache tree could easily sport a tap root three-to-four feet long. The battle between the hydraulic system of the tractor and the clinging root was typically made more interesting by the fact that fire ants had some sort of arrangement with the tree, whereby they built nests right around the trunk. If a particular attempt at removal was successful, the front-end loader, which flexed and heaved from the power being applied, would overcome the root and leap up in the air with the defeated root, which resembled an elongated turnip, nestled in the tangled length of chain. The chain and the root would be covered in fire ants.

  Success was a 50/50 proposition, with many battles ending in the chain slipping free, the top portion of the root breaking off in the grip of the chain or, in extreme cases, the root defeating the hydraulic system and pulling the front tires of the tractor into the earth, refusing to leave its snug home in the clay earth until more dirt was laboriously cleared away.

  However it went, it was a slow, back-breaking process that included some number of painful bites from the omnipresent fire ants. Dave looked back at the pasture behind the tractor and saw the half-dozen spots of upheaval where they’d pulled other huisache roots from the earth. He pinched the dirty edge of glove covering his middle finger between his teeth and pulled his hand free so he could fish his phone from his pocket.

  He punched the button on the side of his phone and noted that they’d been at it for over two hours. He absently entered his pin so he could check his email. Sure enough, his inbox had received over fifteen new messages in this time span. That seemed light, before he recalled that it was Saturday, after all. Quickly scanning the emails he saw that three had been marked urgent—and two of those three were from the same, perpetually needy client. Well, he thought to himself as he shoved the phone back into his pocket,

  I haven’t seen my son for the better part of a week, so your Saturday morning crisis is just going to have to wait.

  He looked at the expanse of pasture ahead of them and saw another twenty-five or so other huisache trees littering the landscape. At this rate it was going to take a couple of weekends to remove them all, but if he didn’t get to them soon, the seeds they dropped would be spread around by various animals, and double or triple the problem.

  He stared at the task ahead, still feeling good about the world and his place in it, when Adam pulled on his sleeve and asked, “Daddy, who is that?”

  He thought Adam was referring to his phone but then followed his gaze to the nearby public road and felt his stomach sink a bit. He blinked once to make sure that his vision wasn’t impaired in some way. It wasn’t.

  The youngish-looking man walking slowly down the middle of the as- phalt road wore a dark blue tank top that nearly blended in with his ebony skin. His legs were clad in a pair of dirty, camouflage shorts that extended down his legs to the point that they were almost pants. His gait was odd, uneven, and Dave puzzled over it until he realized that the man’s right foot sported a black walking boot—like those commonly wore by those who had recently suffered a tear of their Achilles tendon. His face was affixed in a snarl as he shuffled slowly along just thirty or so yards from where they stood in their pasture.

  Adam edged a little closer, which would have been unusual for this nor- mally social kid, were it not for the fact that the man also had a small rifle clenched in front of him. The stock of the rifle was held in the crook of his far arm, with the business end pointed up in their general direction

  —slowly bouncing along to the irregular beat of his irregular gait.

  The young man, shuffling along, turned and stared at Dave with an in- tensity that spoke of some past transgression that had not been forgotten. Dave stared back, puzzled. This was Texas, so someone walking around with a gun wasn’t exactly a foreign sight, but he’d never seen this man before, and the walking boot and lack of a vehicle implied some sort of

  proximity. Dave had heard any number of racist comments out of Bill Jennings regarding the black families that lived in squalor at the end of the road, but they’d never caused Dave any trouble and he preferred their exchanges—which primarily amounted to waving when he drove by— to anything involving Bill Jennings.

  The young man continued to stare, so Dave put his phone back in his pocket and raised his hand in greeting. His effort yielded no response other than the continued stare.

  Adam leaned in closer and whispered, “Daddy, why does he have a gun?”

  Dave broke the stare and glanced down at Adam. He put his left, gloved hand out protectively on Adam’s shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s hunting squirrels or something.”

  “In the road?”

  Dave decided that action was the best remedy. He patted Adam on the head, and then gently encouraged him to step back. He went to the tractor and, making sure Adam was out of the way, fired it up and moved it the few feet necessary to position it over the huisache stump.

  As Dave used the arm to lower the bucket of the front-end loader he stole a look toward the road and noted that the young man with the gun was now even with them as he walked along, still staring. With the engine still running, Dave dropped back down to the pasture and wrapped the length of chain around the exposed portion of the trunk/root. Adam had helped with this portion of the job for their prior work, but this time he just continued to watch the man with the gun.

  Dave patted him on the head and picked him up with one arm as he walked to the other side of the tractor. Adam smiled, despite his anxiety, and eagerly reached for the control arm of the front-end loader.

  “Are you ready?”

  Adam nodded from his perch under Dave’s arm. “3, 2, 1, Go!”

  Adam pushed the control arm down, and the small tractor shook from the tension immediately created by the extensions of the front-end loader, which the hydraulics compelled upward, versus the firm grip of the long tap root. After a few seconds of shuddering,
the front-end loader won the battle and surged toward the highest elevation possible. Dave quickly pushed Adam’s hand off the control arm and put him back down on the ground.

  They took a couple of steps back toward the front of the tractor to see the three-foot-long root dangling below the loader in the grip of the tow chain. Dave enthusiastically rubbed Adam’s head again, and then used this same hand to push him gently in the small of the back until he was well away from the potential path of the front-end loader.

  “Stay there buddy.”

  Adam nodded and Dave kept an eye on him with his peripheral vision as he went back to the other side of the tractor to hop up, engage reverse, and back away from the newly created hole. Dave then noted Adam’s position again as he slowly lowered the front-end loader back toward the ground, leaving enough space below it for him to have room to remove the root from the tangled chain.

  He cut the engine again and hopped back down, only then thinking to look to the side to check on the status of the man with the gun. Dave was initially relieved to see that he had continued to shuffle along such that he was a fair ways down the road. That relief was quickly extinguished when the man turned to glare at him as he continued to shuffle away.

  Dave held his ground, returning the glare, angered by the fact that he had to deal with this weirdo on top of everything else. The young man

  refused to break his glare first, and Dave secretly hoped that he’d trip over something in the road. The game of machismo ended with a series of tugs on his shirt that forced him to look down.

  “Daddy, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Dave looked down at his son’s dirty face and realized that he was already on thin ice with the family for engaging in what could have passed for a novelty for the first hour, but was now definitely work. He forced himself to ignore the man on the road and the game he’d just lost, and silently promised himself that he’d return to this painful chore later in the week when his family was back in the city. “I’ve got an idea of something you might like.”

  ***

  “Daddy,” Adam queried, “I think this boat is a little bit big for the pond.”

  Adam sat on the middle aluminum bench of the Dave’s aged Jon boat. Dave had used the UTV to bring the boat over, and back it down into the upper pond. Still attached to the small trailer, it sat rigid in the water as the wind compelled small waves to gently bump against it. Adam looked particularly cute, sporting his life jacket cinched around him, and his Astros ball cap—which he would no doubt soon drop to the bottom of the metal boat, as he hated having anything on his head.

  Dave, wading through the shallow water, unfastened the two straps that held the rear of the boat to its trailer, then stopped and turned to smile at Adam. “Are you saying that you don’t want to drive the boat?”

  Adam, looking backward to see him as he reached up to grab the hat off his head and throw it down, shook his head excitedly. “No Daddy. It just seems like this is too big.”

  Dave shuffled back around to the front of the rectangular boat and re- leased the cable from the trailer’s winch that attached it to the eye welded to the front portion of the boat. Somewhat nimbly, he hopped onto the center support of the trailer as he walked the boat the rest of the way into the water. He then cautiously walked across the series of aluminum benches, including the one occupied by Adam, to the back of the boat, where the control arm of the outboard jutted out, awaiting his attention. He bent down and fished out the fuel line, coiled up somewhat stiffly below the outboard, and plugged the female end of the line into the cor- responding male receptor on the outboard, pushing it in until he heard an audible click. He then grabbed the rubber bulb built into the line and squeezed it a half-dozen times until it was firm; filled with fuel.

  “Don’t worry Adam, we’re just going to do a lot of circles.”

  Adam immediately hopped up and tried to join Dave, who waived him off to make sure he had room to pull on the starter cord without doing any damage to Adam with his elbow. The boat slowly rocked from their movements in the shallow water as Dave lowered the outboard into posi- tion and turned the throttle to start—or as Adam liked to call it, “bunny” mode, based on the rabbit illustrated on the control arm.

  Dave pulled on the choke to ensure it was on, checked behind him one more time to make sure that Adam hadn’t snuck up on him, and with the coast clear, pulled hard on the starter cord. He was somewhat surprised to hear the old engine cough to life and manage to hold onto its abra- sive rhythm as a fair amount of smoke poured out of the old, two-cycle outboard motor.

  Adam immediately appeared beside him and grabbed for the throttle.

  Dave noted the water

  nearing the top of the transom due to the weight of the outboard and the two of them, and gently pushed Adam back. Out of the corner of his

  eye he saw Marilyn watching them from the porch of the farm house, her iPad clenched against her chest, just below her worried expression.

  “Just a second Bud, we’re almost there.”

  Dave gave it a little more gas. The engine made healthier, stronger noises and the smoke died down. Somewhat.

  He had just gotten the boat back from the mechanic and, in a perfect world, would drive it over to the nearby lake and really open it up for a bit to clean out the gunk no doubt already built up in the newly refurbished carburetor. His was not a perfect world. He had just enough time to run the engine for a bit before he’d need to pack everything up and return his family to The Woodlands. At least he’d had the foresight to leave Sampson in the house, as he would certainly love to join in on the muddy proceedings, and add further to Dave’s clean-up. As if on cue, Marilyn opened the door to the house and Sampson rushed out past her. Dave tracked the progress of the frantic dog as he raced through the pasture.

  Adam shrieked, “Daddy, Sampson’s out!”

  Dave pushed the control lever to reverse and was happy to see that he’d added just enough distance that the leaping dog landed heavily in the water in just ahead of the boat, as opposed to on top of them. He added a little throttle and continued to back away as Sampson tore up the water in front of them.

  “Daddy! Don’t run over Sampson!”

  Dave had no intention of running over his dog, but this peaceful foray into the pond had quickly become complicated. He pushed the engine back into neutral and disengaged the choke. The engine sputtered for a moment, then caught once again. The last thing he needed was to bring Sampson aboard, but the only way he’d have any chance to actually use the motor was if Sampson was out of the water. There was no way he’d stay on the side of the pond, or on the fishing dock.

  Sampson, now at the side of the boat, tried repeatedly to jump in but only succeeded in spreading a deluge of pond water and mud all over Adam and the boat. Dave gently crept over to Adam’s bench and evaded Sampson’s scrambling paws as he gripped the dog by the loose fur on its neck and hauled him aboard.

  Sampson immediately rewarded this effort by shaking vigorously, further coating all involved with dirty water, then trotted up to sit on his favorite spot—the relatively flat decking at the bow.

  “Daddy, I want to drive the boat now.”

  Dave looked down and saw Adam’s hat floating in a pool of dirty water at the bottom of the boat. Water continued to stream from Sampson as he began an overly enthusiastic cleaning session, with one rear leg fixed in the air, slowly creating an even larger puddle in the bottom of the boat.

  In the distance he saw that Marilyn had returned to pacing the porch, still clutching her iPad, and displaying what he couldn’t see but was fairly sure, was a look of disapproval and apprehension.

  “Daddy?”

  Dave decided that the best course of action was to simply go with it, and he sat down a little too heavily next to Adam on the skinny bench, the boat acting even more tippy due to his careless movements. Dave gestured back to the running outboard. “You know how it works, go ahead.”

  Adam clapped his hands toge
ther, took one quick step which farther buried his hat in the filth below, and plopped down on the rear bench. He used both hands to eagerly grab the control arm, and did a quick scan of the area as if he were attempting to find the next navigation buoy.

  “Remember, you’ve got to go slowly—put it into forward and then give it gas—a LITTLE gas.” Dave leaned forward to grab one end of the

  lanyard attached to the kill-switch of the motor. One hard tug and the engine would immediately die.

  Adam nodded, ignored everything that had just been said, and threw it into forward while giving the motor full throttle. They narrowly missed the fishing dock as Dave leaned forward to help Adam guide the path of the boat while he tried to loosen his son’s death grip on the throttle to back it off to a level more reasonable for the small pond. Adam pushed back against Dave’s hands as an amazing smile broke out across his face, and he whooped with pleasure as they careened into yet another donut.

  Sampson eventually fell overboard when Adam decided to reverse direc- tion and Dave pulled the lanyard to prevent further injury. The outboard gratefully died and, aside from the lengthy dissertation he received from Marilyn on the ride home regarding the definition of safety, the event concluded without further mishap.

  CHAPTER TEN: Grasshoppers

  Later that week Dave arose blearily on the couch with the now familiar shotgun wedged into the corner cushion next to him. He rubbed his eyes as he fumbled in the darkness for the phone next to him somewhere, and finally brought it up to his face. It read 4:58 a.m. so his biological/stress clock had once again awakened him just before his actual alarm. He stood, aching from all the time spent in his truck yesterday, as well as the few hours of sleep he had grabbed on the couch. Yawning, he scratched at an itch on his side and thought through the challenges of the day.