by Bill Crider
12
When we got to Brenda's house, Fred called Mary while I showered and changed into some of Perry's clothes. They were too tight and too short, but they would have to do. Then I watched Brenda while Fred cleaned up. Brenda would get her turn later, if I thought we could trust her.
"We're not going to tell anyone about this, Brenda," I said. "We don't want you and Perry to get into any more trouble than your already have.
I didn't know whether she would buy me as an understanding, sympathetic character. After all, I was the one who'd wrestled her to the ground and hit her in the back of the head after she'd tried to knee me and deck me with her fist. But I was telling the truth. It wasn't the time to cause any more trouble.
She was wet and muddy, with dark streaks of mud in her blonde hair, made darker now by the dampness and sticking together in thick strands.
"I don't know why I did it," she said. "I just thought that somehow I ought to do something for Zach."
And find out about the money, I thought. Brenda was still looking for a way out, and if Zach couldn't go with her, well, she would probably be willing to go alone.
It wasn't that I blamed her much. I'd seen myself for the last year, and my friend Dino for a lot more years than that, burying ourselves in a place that almost allowed us to forget that the outside world existed.
The trouble with that was that the outside world had a way of intruding, and then you had to do something about it. Brenda wasn't like us. She was young and eager; she didn't want to be buried so long before her time.
Fred came into the room, toweling his hair. Fred's body was thinner than mine, and Perry Stone's clothing hung loosely on him. He didn't have much hair, either, and it didn't take him long to get it dry.
"All right," he said, tossing the towel on a chair. "What do we do now?"
We were sitting at the kitchen table, which was round, with a yellow formica top. Fred pulled up a chair, not the one he'd tossed the towel on, and joined us. The chairs had yellow vinyl seats and backs and were made of some kind of tubular steel. It wasn't the most expensive dinette set I'd ever seen.
"We have to decide what to do with Mrs. Stone," I said. "Then we go home and get a good night's sleep."
"Shoulda shot her while we were back in the woods," Fred said. "That's what she was gonna do to us."
Fred sometimes had a dry way of putting things, and it was hard to tell whether he meant them or not. Considering what he had said when Brenda was holding the rifle on us, I thought he might be serious.
So did Brenda. "I wasn't going to shoot you. I really wasn't. I just wanted to scare you. To find out what happened to Zach."
Maybe she really believed that, but I didn't.
Fred didn't either. He said, "Somebody shot Zach, that's what happened. And I'd like to know who did it just as much as you would. From what you were sayin' not so long ago, I think old Perry might be involved more than I thought he was."
It was hard for me to see that Perry could have been involved. I'd talked to him, and he just didn't seem the kind of man to get mixed up in murder. He was a little hot-headed, but he had fought Zach with his fists, not with a gun.
On the other hand, Brenda was a good-looking woman, and Perry had gotten his friends to lie for him. Or he had if Brenda was to be believed.
That's the way it always is in life. You never knew who was telling the truth. Sometimes the people who were talking to you didn't even know they were lying. They were telling what they thought was the truth, and they believed it.
"I think we should forget the whole thing," I said.
They both looked at me.
"I mean it," I said. "We just go home and forget it."
"Why?" Fred said. "For all we know, she's the one who shot at us the other day. She might take a notion to do it again if we let her get away with this."
"That bullet I dug out of the dead gator didn't come from any .22, did it?"
"Well, no, but--"
"So that was somebody else. And Brenda wouldn't come after us again. Would you, Brenda?"
She shook her head, swinging the dirty blonde hair. "No," she said. "No, I wouldn't do that."
I looked at Fred. "See? She wouldn't do it again."
"You believe her?"
"Sure," I said, though I wasn't really sure. "She'd never be able to get both of us, and we'll tell Mary when we get back to your place. That'll make three of us who know. And if one of us has an accident or gets shot, the others can tell the Sheriff. And they can tell Perry about his wife and Zach."
"I won't do anything," Brenda said. "I promise."
This time, I believed her.
~ * ~
The next morning I was in the county library, looking through back issues of both Houston newspapers. There was something I'd read a few weeks back that had nudged at the corners of my memory while we were standing there in the rain with Brenda, and I wanted to see if I could find the article again.
It took over an hour of digging, but I didn't mind. It was much more pleasant than the other ways I'd been spending my time lately--getting shot at while lying in a swampy lake, getting chased by a paleolithic truck, standing in the rain while being threatened by a woman with a rifle.
I finally located the article I was looking for, though I almost missed it. It was on one of the inside pages, and while it was three columns wide, it was still fairly brief. It was about PCBs being found in disposal pits beside natural gas pipelines.
I asked the librarian if I could make a copy, and she showed me how to use the machine. I finally got the paper in the right position, put in my coin, and pressed the right button. The copy was a bit dark, but it was still easily readable.
Fred was not impressed when I showed it to him.
"I don't see what this has to do with a damned thing," he said.
"I'm not sure that it fits in," I said. "But last night I noticed that something was funny about the place we were in. I couldn't figure out what, at first, but then it came to me. It was the smell."
Fred thought about that. "I guess I noticed that, too, a little bit. But it smells like that around here ever' now and then, when the wind's right."
"There wasn't much wind last night, and it was raining. We're going to have to go back and check anyway. Maybe this time we won't be interrupted."
"So what you're sayin' is that somebody's dumping chemicals on my land."
"Yes. I think that was a barrel of some kind that I was wading out to look at before Brenda Stone got the drop on us."
"Could've been, I guess. You might not be so quick to wade out there again, I bet."
I hadn't been so quick the first time, the way I remembered it. Maybe this time I'd wear hip boots.
Fred looked at the copy of the article again. "This here says they weren't dumpin' the stuff on anybody's land. Says they were buryin' it right there beside the pipelines."
"They got caught at that," I said. "Maybe they found a new place to get rid of it. Or maybe it's someone else."
"Oh. What is this stuff, anyway, this PCB?"
"Polychlorinated byphenyls," I said. "It might cause cancer."
"And they put that stuff on my property?"
"We don't know for sure, but one of those pipelines isn't too far from here. And one of those companies is Wessey Gas. You've seen their signs, haven't you?"
"They're all over. Can't miss 'em."
"All of them are red, green, and blue, too. The same colors that barrel looked to be."
"Pretty far-fetched," Fred said.
Maybe it was, but it all fit.
"Why'd anybody use those poly-whatevers in the first place?" he said.
"It's used as some kind of flame retardant," I said.
He thought some more. "I guess it's worth checkin' out, then."
"It's better than anything else we've got."
"I still don't see what that's got to do with killin' my gator," he said.
"Me neither," I said.
~ * ~<
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As it turned out, I did the checking on my own. After all, I was the hired hand. Besides, I thought it would be a good idea to leave someone behind to call in the troops in case I disappeared. I was going to be very careful, but you never knew what might happen. But most of all I wanted to do a little more talking before I did the checking, the kind of talking that I could do best if Fred stayed behind.
He argued about it, but eventually he gave in. He could see the logic of my reasoning.
"But you better be back here by seven o'clock," he said. "Eight at the latest, or I'm callin' the Sheriff."
That was all right with me. "You know where to send him," I said.
Fred let me take the Jeep, since it would still be pretty messy in the woods and beyond. The Subaru, with its front-wheel drive, would probably have made it through, but it would have gotten so muddy I might not have recognized it. The Jeep, on the other hand, was already in that condition, with thick clumps of mud in the wheel wells and on the bumpers and sides.
"It stays that way most of the time," Fred told me. "I cleaned it up before you came, but it'll run just fine while it's muddy. It always does. I'll clean it up again next year."
So I felt like a real off-road backwoodsman as I pulled up in front of Hurley Eckles' store and station. It was one of those rare nice days when the humidity was lower than the temperature. The rainshowers had been caused by the leading edge of a cool front, which had blown through during the night, carrying the moisture in the air along with it.
A less pleasant side effect was the high wind, which whooshed through the trees and made them sound a little like waves on the Gulf. It was so windy that no one was sitting outside at Hurley's place.
I got out of the Jeep and went inside. The store wasn't very well stocked, just a couple of wooden shelves with the necessities of life: toilet paper, Vienna sausage, Ranch Style Beans. Things like that. There were two stacks of new tires and a cooler for beer and soft drinks. No milk or anything that might spoil. The ceiling was low, and there were a couple of fluorescent tubes for light. There was a short counter with an old cash register on it.
Hurley and his buddy Temp were sitting in two lawn chairs in front of the counter. The chairs were made of aluminum tubing and plastic webbing that was old and ragged. The bottom of Hurley's chair sagged, and a strand of the webbing hung down to the floor.
"You gettin' to be a regular customer of mine," Hurley said. "'Cept you don't ever buy nothin'."
Temp grinned at his pal's wit. One of these days he was going to break down and say something. It was an event I was looking forward to.
"Just dropped in for some more friendly conversation," I said.
"You bring that Fred Benton along for company?"
"Not this time."
Hurley spit on the floor, which was made of concrete and stained a snuffy brown all round the chair. Well, it was his store.
"What you want to talk about this time?" he said.
"Rustlers," I said. "Illegal killing of alligators. Things like that."
"That horse turd," Hurley said.
"Which one is that?" I said.
"That damn Fred Benton, that's which one. He don't never let a man forget, and he don't never forgive."
"How's that?" I said.
"One time," Hurley said. "One. That's all it takes to get a man like Fred Benton on your case for life. That horse turd."
"One time for what?"
Hurley spit and sighed. Temp sighed too, whether in sympathy or just as an echo, I couldn't tell. I was just glad to know he could make a sound.
"Look," Hurley said. "This is the way it is. Me and Fred don't get along, and it all comes down to one thing." He stared at me, his watery eyes sincere behind his glasses. "Gators."
"Gators?"
"That's what I said. Gators. He likes 'em. I don't. That's what it all comes down to."
"You're trying to tell me that you and Fred have a philosophical disagreement?"
"I don't know what the hell that means," he said, pushing his hat up on his head. People like Hurley would no more think about taking their hats off indoors than I would of exposing myself on stage at Carnegie Hall. "Let me put it this way. There ain't a man in this whole area that ain't killed him a gator once or twice. There was a time when it was purely illegal, no season or nothin', but if you could kill one and sell the skin, you could get good money for it. And there's been a time or two when most people around here could use a little money."
He leaned forward in the chair. "Not Fred, though. 'Course not. He's always had plenty. But the rest of us? Sure. So why not get it the best way you know how? If that means killin' a gator, well, that's just the way it is. A gator ain't nothin' but a big lizard that's lived way beyond its time, anyway. Those things ought to've died off way back in the prehistoric days."
He looked over at Temp as if seeking support for his argument. Temp looked back but kept quiet.
"What're they good for, huh?" Hurley said. “They do anything good for anybody? 'Course not. They kill animals, probably even calves, but they don't do anything worth a damn. So what's wrong with killin' one?"
"They're an endangered species," I said, the words sounding as if I'd learned them on a PBS documentary, which I probably had.
"Who gives a shit?" He spit again. "If they was all gone, who'd miss 'em, 'cept for Fred Benton?"
I didn't answer him. I thought I'd miss them, but what did I know? Maybe I wouldn't even care. I hear on the news that we're losing any number of species every day as the South American rain forests are being destroyed for timber, and it bothers me, but I haven't actually done much mourning.
"Anyhow, that's what it's all about," Hurley said. "Fred's been after me ever since, and he's accused me of ever'thing that's happened, too. I think he blames me for the Vietnam war, ever' hurricane that hits the coast, and AIDS.”
"I don't think he'd go quite that far," I said. "And you still haven't told me exactly what you're talking about."
"All right, I'll tell you. One time, one, I killed a gator. It happened to be on Fred's land, and I didn't want him to know it, but he found out about it. I needed the money bad, so I did it. And that was it. Never before, never since. But he still holds it against me."
"When was this?" I said.
"Hell, I don't know." He looked at Temp. "Twenty years ago?"
Temp nodded.
"At least twenty years ago. Maybe more."
Temp nodded again.
Well, I wasn't surprised, exactly. Fred was a man who had a way of holding grudges, and he did like alligators.
"So that's why he's got it in for me," Hurley said. "After all this time, he won't let it go. But I'll tell you this. I didn't kill any gator on his place in the last twenty years, I didn't kill Zach Holt or his wife, and I ain't no rustler. So how's that?"
I told him that was fine with me. "But you've heard about rustling around here?"
"Sure. Ever'body's heard about it. Don't mean I did it."
"I didn't mean to say you had. What I'd like to know is, who's losing all the cattle?"
Hurley thought about it. Even Temp looked as if he might be thinking. Or trying to.
"Come to think of it, I don't know," Hurley said. "That's kind of funny, ain't it?"
"Funny?"
"Funny strange, not funny ha-ha," he said. "You'd think I'd know a thing like that."
"You sure would," I said. "If anybody's been losing cattle, that is."
"Far as I know, not a single soul's said a word about that part of it. I wonder why that is?"
"What have they said?"
He thought it over.
Temp thought it over, too, or seemed to. With him it was hard to tell one way or the other.
"I guess what they've talked about is the trucks," Hurley said.
"What trucks?"
"The cattle trucks. They come by on the county roads at night. Ever'body hears 'em."
"If you hear them but don't see them, how do you know that
they're cattle trucks? Especially if there aren't any cattle missing?
"I don't know," Hurley said. "What other kind of trucks would there be back in here?"
I had an idea about that, but I still wondered why everyone seemed to think there was rustling going on.
Then Hurley came up with the answer. "I think it was that Deppidy Jackson. I remember he was in here one day drinkin' a Coke. I remember he was the one that asked if there was rustlin' goin' on around here."
Somehow, I wasn't surprised.
13
I didn't drive down the ruts that wound into the woods.
First, I drove by the collapsed house to see if anything was stirring. Nothing was. Then I drove the Jeep into the same clump of bushes where I'd parked the Subaru the day before, but because I'd already made an opening I had to break off a few branches to cover the Jeep, or at least try to conceal it from a casual glance.
It always looks easy when someone does that in the movies, but they must be dealing with a much more brittle type of tree. It was quite a struggle to get even one or two limbs of any size broken off, so I just did my best and hoped it would get by. I didn't really think anyone would be looking for me.
I also made sure not to walk down the rutted road. Instead, I angled in through the woods, hoping that I had enough woodsy skills to enable me to find the right spot.
It was a doubtful proposition, since most of my woodcraft had been gleaned from various old issues of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, particularly the ones in which Huey, Dewey, and Louie participated in the Junior Woodchucks. Still, it seemed like a relatively simple task, at least compared to something like finding the North Star and using it to guide you halfway across the continent, which escaped slaves had once done.
The rain the previous evening had made the ground mushy, and the walking wasn't especially pleasant, particularly with the wind whipping around in the treetops above me. There were no animal or bird sounds to distract me, or if there were I couldn't hear them above the sound of the wind.
I slogged along, trying to keep my footing and trying hard to avoid slapping myself in the face with low-hanging limbs. After a few minutes, I was almost as wet as I had been the night before. In the shade under the trees, the water hadn't evaporated or been blown off the leaves by the wind, and a lot of it wound up on my clothes.
