The Backwoods

by Edward Lee

  Kid Rock had managed to stop screaming long enough to make the very unwise decision to attempt to drive off. Hair hanging in blood-drenched strings, he jerked his hand forward, touched the keys in the ignition, was about to start the car, when—

  “Holy Jesus, mother of God, you gotta be fuckin’ shitting me!”

  —Trey emptied the rest of the GOEC into his eyes.

  Sutter dragged a dozenish bags of crystal methamphetamine, aka “ice,” out of the black guy’s pockets, not to mention a pipe, and—of all things—a 1964 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card. Sutter pocketed the card, then allowed the point of his steel-toed black oxford to come into direct proximity with the area of space that was occupied by the black guy’s scrotum. That took the rest of the zing out of him.

  Finally got me another Mantle card for my collection . . .

  The cowbell on the door clanged. Pappy Halm, a well-known Agan’s Point local and the store’s proprietor, hobbled out front, aghast. He clacked toward the scene on his cane and objected in his typical loud rail, “What the hell ya doin’ Chief? I seen ya in the winder! All that fella done is make a blamed phone call! What right ya got to beat him down like that?”

  Sutter showed him a handful of ice. “This walkin’ piece a’ shit here and his hippie buddy are selling these hard drugs to kids. Just tried to sell some to a fifteen-year-old not five minutes ago.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Halm replied, then cracked the end of his cane hard up into the black guy’s crotch. Now the guy was gasping, screaming, and blubbering all at the same time.

  “Want me to cuff Kid Rock, Chief?” Trey asked.

  “Naw.” Sutter dragged the black guy up. “If we write this one up and take ‘em to county detent, I’ll miss dinner. And you know how fierce the wife bitches at me when I miss dinner. Fuckers’d be out on bail in the time it takes me to fart.”

  “Roger that.”

  “But we better look the vehicle over. Check that guy’s pockets and under the seat.” Sutter opened the Humvee’s back door for a quick search. Jesus . . . He found a tackle box full of more ice. “Bet there’s a thousand bucks’ worth of dope in here,” he said.

  Trey peeked between the front seats. “More’n that, by the looks of it. Just think of all the kids they’d be selling it to. And look at what the hippie was carryin’.” He held up a small pistol.

  “Jesus. These guys.”

  Sutter shoved the dizzy black guy back into the front seat, but before he closed the door—

  Crack!

  —he raised his fiberglass nightstick high over his head and whacked it down across the guy’s thigh. The thighbone snapped like a stout bough.

  Trey whipped out his own billy. “A limp to remember us by. The same for this one?”

  “Naw. He’s gotta drive. But I think a Southern-style haircut might do him justice. Fucker must think he’s in Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

  Trey twirled a finger around a lock of Kid Rock’s hair, pressed his other hand against his head, and yanked as though starting a lawn mower. The kid barked a righteous yelp when a clump of hair popped out of his head along with a square inch of scalp.

  Sutter’s temples pounded in sudden disgust as he looked at the shining vehicle and the gold chains on the wheezing black man. “It ain’t fuckin’ fair, ya know? I ain’t an ungrateful man, and I ain’t greedy either. But I got my problems just like any hardworkin’ man. Them two mortgages I was telling you about are bleedin’ me dry, car insurance just gone up again and so did county property taxes, not to mention the damned Ay-rabs keep jacking the price a’ gas. Got a wife that eats more than the Redskins defensive line, God love her, and who runs my credit cards up like she’s Bill fuckin’ Gates’s wife insteada the wife of a small-town police chief, and now the blasted AC up ’n’ broke, so that’s gonna cost me out the ass . . . so I am pinched to the max. I’m so broke I can barely pay fuckin’ attention, and then look what we got here.” He glared intensely at the shuddering black guy and his accomplice. “We got two piles of walkin,’ talkin’ garbage wearing gold jewelry and drivin’ a brand-new Hummer, and how’d they get the kind of bread for all that?” He looked at the bags of crystal meth. “By sellin’ this shit. Yes, sir, these pieces a’ shit live large and got enough cash to choke a fuckin’ horse, and what do I got? Enough debt to choke a fuckin’ horse.” He slammed the Humvee door, made a fist of his right sand mitt, and said directly to the black guy, “We don’t take kindly to people sellin’ drugs in our town, so listen up.”

  He pinched the guy’s cheeks together. “You ‘n’ your buddy are gonna turn this jalopy around and drive outta here, and you ain’t gonna stop till you’re plumb out of this county, and you’re never, and I mean never, gonna come back here again, and if we ever, and I mean ever, see you anywhere near Agan’s Point in the future—”

  Whap!

  He rammed his sand mitt right into the guy’s mouth.

  “—we might have to rough ya up a little.”

  The black guy was spitting out teeth. Kid Rock convulsed behind the wheel, backing the Hummer up and spinning wheels out of the lot.

  Trey rubbed his hands together. “All in a day’s work, huh, Chief?”

  “Damn straight. And I snagged myself one hell of a Mantle card. Pisses me off, though.”

  “What’s that, Chief?”

  Sutter dropped the tackle box and rest of the drugs into the garbage. “A small fortune worth of dope, and those punks probably sell that much shit to kids every damn day.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “Driving around in a brand-new fifty-grand Hummer—”

  “That tricked-up model? Sixty, sixty-five at least.”

  “Yeah, and we drive clunkers. Gold chains, too. Shit. Only thing I can afford to wear around my neck is a line of sweat. Ain’t right.”

  “No, it ain’t, Chief.” Trey crossed his arms with a look of concern. “But I’d say we done a lotta good today. Ain’t no drugs gonna be sold by them fellas fer a while. And . . .” Trey paused to reflect on something. “Let me ask you somethin’, Chief.”

  Sutter scratched his belly, trying to shake off the irritation. “Go ahead.”

  “Is stealin’ from a thief really stealin’?”

  “Huh?”

  “If a fella breaks the letter of the law but the only person he victimizes is a lawbreaker himself, is that really a crime?”

  Sutter didn’t get where this was coming from. “Well, you told me Father Darren said lusting after another woman ain’t really lust so long as you wouldn’t really get it on with her. So I guess . . . no, it ain’t.”

  “I didn’t think so neither, ‘cos, see . . .” Trey reached in his pockets. “While you were checkin’ the backseat, I took the liberty of lightening up those boys’ wrists—”

  “The Rolexes?” Sutter queried with some excitement.

  “Yeah, Chief, the Rolexes.” Off of two fingers, Trey dangled two genuine Rolex Submariners. He passed one to Sutter. “No doubt it was drug money those guys used to buy these.”

  Sutter inspected the watch with a gleam in his eye. “No doubt.”

  “So we could sell these fine watches and give the money to the charity of our choice, or we could even—”

  “We could even wear the fuckin’ things ourselves,” Sutter finished, and put the watch on. Perfect fit. “It’s legitimate for officers of the law to own accurate timepieces.”

  “Roger that.” Trey put his on too, admiring it. “And one more thing. Since we agree that lustin’ after a chick you wouldn’t bone ain’t lust, and stealin’ from a criminal ain’t stealin’ . . .”

  Sutter’s eyes widened.

  “Look what my fingers found in Kid Rock’s pocket.” Now Trey held a wad of bills. Mostly hundreds showed when he fanned the stack. “A little more than two grand here, Chief, and tell me if I’m wrong, but this here pile of cash is pure drug profits. It ain’t money those fellas earned mowin’ lawns.”

  “It’s ill-gotten gains procured during a critical
police procedure, Trey,” Sutter embellished. “We’ll split it.”

  Trey handed over the whole wad. “Nope. You take it, Chief. You buy you ‘n’ your wife the brand-new air conditioner you need. You asked God fer help, and He just answered your prayer. Me? I’m fine. When I need some help, I’ll ask the Lord myself.”

  This shitty day just turned really fine, really fast. Sutter pocketed the money with some haste. “I’ll remember this, Trey. Thanks.”

  Trey grinned. “Don’t thank me. Thank the Lord.”

  I damn straight will. . . . “We’ll drop the gun off next time we go up to county. And right now?” Sutter looked at the Qwik-Mart. “Coffee and doughnuts on me.”

  “Make way fer the law!” Pappy Halm celebrated behind the counter. “Our fine boys in blue! Agan’s Point is damn proud to have such brave officers protectin’ us!”

  “Proud enough to slide us free coffee and doughnuts?” Trey asked.

  “Hell, no! What do I look like? Fuckin’ Santa Claus?” Halm winked. “But refills are half-price.”

  “You’re all class, Pappy.”

  Sutter wended to the doughnut display and began to tong out a box of cream-filled and glazed. “Guess that poor black fella’ll have to sell some of his gold to cover his dental bill.”

  Trey guffawed. “Yeah, and Kid Rock’ll have to comb his hair funny to cover up the permanent bald spot.”

  Pappy Halm slapped his thighs. “They picked the wrong guys to fuck with today!”

  “Never seen a worse pair of scumbags in my life,” Trey added, eyes cruising over the mag rack full of Hustler, Penthouse, and Playboy.

  “Speaking of scumbags . . .” Sutter noticed a copy of the town’s weekly paper, the Agan’s Point Messenger, and the blaring headlines: LOCAL MAN MURDERED. He picked it up and scanned over the short article about the mysterious death of Dwayne Parker. “Damn near forgot about this. Feel so bad for Judy—the poor dumb girl don’t even realize that Dwayne wasn’t no good for her.”

  “Wasn’t no good for anyone or anything,” Trey pitched in. “There’s a bad seed in every crowd.”

  Sutter read more of the article. “This came out the day after they found the body; it don’t say when the funeral is. Hey, Pappy? You know when they’re holdin’ services for Dwayne Parker?”

  The name seemed to slap Halm’s age-lined faced. His eyes lit up in a furor. “Dwayne Parker! That no-good, low-down rat bastard! Ya ask me, they can’t bury that fucker deep enough. He ain’t worth the lumber it takes to build the coffin! Ain’t worth the elbow grease it takes to dig the hole, nor the fuckin’ air ya gotta breathe whiles yer gettin’ the job done.”

  “They ain’t buryin’ him,” Trey said, skirting the point. “Crematin’ him is what I heard.”

  “Then fuck it! That cracker ain’t worth the gas it takes to burn him. Ain’t worth the effort it takes me to grunt out a whiskey-piss into his urn. Cryin’ shame the . way that prick treated Judy, broke her damn heart, slappin’ her around like that. You ask me, any man who beats his wife should have his own ass beat twice as hard.”

  Sutter nodded, chewing a cream-filled. “We’re not in disagreement there, Pappy. But I wanna show my face and offer my condolences to Judy. When’s the funeral?”

  “You ask me, they shouldn’t even have a funeral for that worthless piece a’ shit. He pulled up here one night all pissy drunk, and I could see in the car he had a woman with him, and that woman sure as shit wasn’t Judy, and he walks in all stinkin’ a’ beer and talkin’ loud, grabs himself a twelve-pack and just looks at me ‘n’ says ‘Put it on my wife’s tab, ya old fuck,’ and then walks back out. Hocks a big looger on my front winder ta boot. That son of a fuckin’ dirty mutt. I ever tell you about the time he—”

  Trey slapped a hand down on the counter. “Pappy! Chief wants to know when the services are!”

  Halm blinked. “Oh, yeah. Saturday noon, at the Schoenfeld Funeral Parlor. I’ll be there, fer Judy a’ course—but not fer that rat bastard.”

  Sutter rolled his eyes. Gee, I guess he didn’t think much of Dwayne.

  “Hearin’ some damn funny stuff, since we’re on the topic,” Trey said in an aside.

  Sutter put the paper down, listening.

  “Funny ain’t the word,” Halm said. “Nonstop fucked-up is more like it, since the day they found that fucker dead.”

  Shit . . . Sutter asked with some hesitation, “What’s fucked-up, Pappy?”

  “The talk about Dwayne is what. You fellas are the cops, fer Christ’s sake. Ya musta seen the body.”

  “We didn’t get the call; Luntville EMTs did,” Sutter said quickly.

  “Well, ya musta heard that somebody cut his head off.”

  “Aw, we all heard that, Pappy.,” Trey stepped in. “That ain’t the half of it. I know some of Luntville’s EMTs—they’re buddies of mine—and they said there was something really fucked-up about the way he lost his head . . . but they didn’t say exactly what. Something really screwy, though.”

  Sutter frowned through an uncomfortable tremor in his belly. “Don’t listen to every rumor you hear, ‘specially in a hick burg like this. Stuff gets all blown out of proportion.”

  “I don’t know, Chief. I went down to the county morgue to take a look myself and they wouldn’t even let me in. Why’s that? I’m a police officer in the jurisdiction of the murder. It was our crime scene. Ain’t our fault we weren’t the first responders.”

  “Trey, it ain’t even positive yet that it was a murder. Could’ve been an accident. See? Folks start talkin’ without knowin’ all the facts and they jump to conclusions. County didn’t let you in ‘cos I’d already been there to ID the body.”

  Trey stalled at the information. “Shit, Chief, you didn’t tell me that.”

  “Right, I didn’t tell no one except Judy, because she’s the official next of kin. She wasn’t up to seein’ the body, so I went in there on her behalf.”

  Halm and Trey both looked at him.

  “So?” Halm asked.

  “Was his head really gone?” Trey finished.

  Sutter sighed. “Yeah, Trey.”

  “And they never found the head,” Halm added. “Somebody cut off his head and run off with it. That ain’t murder?”

  “We still get gators,” Sutter hedged. “It coulda been a gator. He could’ve fallen down the bluff and lost his head on the rocks. Fuckin’ truck could’ve been barrelin’ around the bend and knocked his head off with the rearview. It could’ve been anything. So relax ‘n’ stop talkin’ shit, ’cos that just makes the rumors worse. We don’t want all this weird talk getting back to Judy. She’s bent out of shape enough as it is.”

  Trey and Halm quieted but only for a moment.

  Trey began, “Was there anything screwed-up about the neck wound?”

  “No, Trey,” Sutter replied, aggravated. “His head got cut off. Simple. It happens. It was a decapitation. Said so in the autopsy report.”

  This was Chief Sutter’s first lie.

  Pappy popped some chaw in his mouth: Red Man. “They’re also sayin’ it was Squatters who killed him. Everd Stanherd’s people. Makes sense.”

  Jesus, Sutter griped. These boys won’t get off it. He couldn’t tell the truth about it, could he? He didn’t even understand the truth himself. “It makes no sense, Pappy. Ain’t no reason for Squatters to kill Dwayne Parker. You don’t kill the husband of the woman who keeps your ass out of the welfare line. And you seen these people. I’ll bet the biggest of the men don’t even stand five-six. Dwayne was six-three and was still packin’ all them muscles from working out in the joint all those years. Shit, there ain’t ten Squatters who could take down Dwayne Parker.”

  “There are if one of ‘em had a machete in his paw,” Trey pointed out.

  I just can’t win here, Sutter thought.

  Pappy spit brown juice into a Yoo-Hoo bottle. “And ain’t it funny ‘bout how Dwayne gets his ticket punched right in the middle of all this talk about some Squatters disapp
earin’. Like maybe he had somethin’ to do with it.”

  “Or done it himself,” Trey said.

  Now Sutter was grinding his teeth. “Done what himself, Trey?”

  “Offed some Squatters. Dwayne hated the Squatters; everyone knows that.”

  “Listen to me, both of you.” Sutter’s voice hardened. “There ain’t no Squatters who disappeared. It’s bullshit.”

  “Nearly a dozen’s what I heard,” Pappy offered.

  “Here one day, gone the next,” Trey said.

  This was getting hairy. “You two boneheads listen up. Ain’t nobody’s disappeared ‘round here. It’s a free country. Some of these people think they can do better some-wheres else than here . . . and that’s their right. There ain’t nothing wrong with Squatters just’cos they’re a little funny-lookin’ in the face. They’re just as smart as anyone else and just as able to work. Some of ‘em get tired of crabbing, so they move on. Like anywhere.”

  Sutter’s sensible explanation didn’t seem to convince the others. It was true that an unusual number of Stanherd’s Squatters had left their abode on the Point, some quite suddenly. Stanherd himself had reported it several times, but even he admitted that they probably did just leave town of their own accord. Sutter did know of the anomaly regarding Dwayne Parker’s death, but of missing Squatters? He knew nothing, nor did he believe any foul play was involved. I swear to God. Gossip mouthpieces like Trey and Pappy Halm just make my job harder. . . .

  “So I don’t want to hear no more crap about Squatters disappearing into the night and Dwayne’s fuckin’ head never being found,” he finished.

  All three heads turned when the cowbell clanged, and in walked a lean, fortyish man with short blond hair, blue eyes, and an expression that could be deemed somber. He wore a beige windbreaker in spite of the heat, work pants and boots without a speck of dirt on them.