by Ben Rehder
“I am,” Rosen said.
“You want me to show off my junk?”
“The ladies will love it, Dirk.”
“A bunch of queers, too.”
“Yeah, so? Who cares? It’s free PR.”
“Sort of goes against the whole Christian values thing, doesn’t it?” Dirk said.
“Not really, because, see, the great thing about this type of exposure—pardon the pun—is that you can pretend you didn’t even know you were flaunting your dong. You can act like it was just a questionable fashion choice. And besides, it’s not your fault the Lord blessed you with an enormous member, right? He made you that way.”
Rosen was rationalizing, but Dirk had to admit he was tempted. Who wouldn’t want to be known for being well-hung? Truly, it was a clever ploy. But there was a small problem. Well, not small. That wasn’t the right choice of words. More like an average problem. Before Dirk could think of a way to address it, Rosen asked the most pertinent question.
“So, uh, Dirk, I never thought I’d be asking you this, but how big is your penis?”
Dirk laughed. “Are we seriously having this conversation?”
“It’s just you and me, buddy,” Rosen said. “Totally confidential.”
“Look, it’s plenty big,” Dirk said, which was, generally speaking, true—in normal circumstances, among a representative sampling of the general male population.
“Hamm sized?” Rosen asked.
“Maybe even bigger,” Dirk lied, because the alternative was to admit he didn’t have the necessary assets to pull it off.
“No shit? Dude, that’s impressive. Good for you.”
“Yeah, well, thanks, but I’m not buying into this idea, Ron. I know you have a reputation for being some sort of marketing genius, but—no offense—I think this idea is pretty stupid. There’s more to me than a bulge.”
Rosen was silent for a moment. Dirk thought maybe he’d pissed him off, which would’ve been okay, but then Rosen said, “Look, if it’s about size—if you stretched the truth a minute ago—don’t worry. I have a solution. Jon Hamm might even be using one himself.”
“I didn’t stretch the truth. What are you even talking about? Using what?”
“What we can do is get yourself a strap-on, and it’ll look just like the real thing inside your pants. See, it’s hollowed out, so you can insert your—”
“Jesus, Ron, just stop talking, okay?” Dirk was feeling pushed, and he was starting to lose his temper. “It’s not a size problem. I don’t need some sort of weird device. I just think it’s a dumb idea, and maybe even a little perverse, and I’m not gonna do it. So let’s just drop it.”
“Okay, man. Didn’t mean to get you riled up.”
“I’m not riled up,” Dirk said, getting even more riled up. “It’s just that you take things too far sometimes. You forget about the integrity of the family, you know? How’s something like that gonna look—me walking around with my schlong showing? That’s the way we want to build an audience? Really?”
“That’s fine, Dirk. It was just an idea. If you don’t want to do it, that’s entirely your choice. I understand.”
And that’s where the conversation ended. Dirk should’ve known Rosen would immediately turn around and make the same suggestion to Jasper, and that Jasper would happily go along with it.
Three days later, Jasper went to a Brad Paisley concert in Dallas with a beautiful redhead he was dating at the time. As he stepped from the limo in skintight jeans, cameras captured what appeared to be a sizeable appendage running half the length of his thigh.
Within 24 hours, somebody had created a website called www.jaspersjunk.com.
18
“Check this out,” Red said the moment Billy Don climbed into his truck.
They’d been hired to install a metal roof on a small pole barn this morning, but at the moment, Red had more important things on his mind. Red raised his cell phone and played the voicemail he’d found waiting for him thirty minutes earlier, when he’d gotten out of the shower.
Red, this is Sheriff Bobby Garza. I understand you are under the impression that you’re a suspect in the Harley Frizzell case. Let me put your mind at ease and make it clear that you are not. Deputy Tatum questioned you as a witness, not a suspect, and he was satisfied with everything you told him. In any case, I need you to refrain from making contact with other potential witnesses. There is no need for you to conduct your own investigation, as it were. In fact, if you keep it up, you could be in violation of the law. So...I am asking you to please stop. If you have any questions, just give me a call. Thanks.
Red slipped his phone into his shirt pocket and looked at Billy Don triumphantly.
“Well, there you go,” Billy Don said.
“There I go, what?”
“Means you’re all clear. You can forget all that paranoid nonsense from last night.”
“Good lord,” Red said. He shifted into reverse and began to back out of the driveway at Betty Jean’s house, which had also been Billy Don’s house ever since he’d popped the question. “Are you really that gullible?” he asked.
“’Bout what?” Billy Don said.
“About what that message really means,” Red said.
“I’ll probably regret this,” Billy Don said, “but what do you think it means?”
“It means my so-called ‘paranoid nonsense’ from last night was right on the money,” Red said.
“How you figger that?” Billy Don said.
“Okay, follow along, Einstein. If they really are watching me, and they thought I knew they was watching, and they wanted to make me think it was my imagination, what would they do?”
“Slip something into your drinking water?” Billy Don said. “Or maybe use one of them Men In Black memory eraser gizmos.”
“Go ahead and yuk it up, Billy Don.”
“Okay, Mr. Conspiracy Theory,” Billy Don said. “Tell me what the cops’d do. I could use a good laugh.”
Red looked over at him.
“You know what, Billy Don? You’ve been changing lately. You aware of that? You didn’t used to be so damn argumentative and snotty and sarcastic.”
“Hey, you called me gullible,” Billy Don said. “Then you said I was Einstein.”
“Yeah, but I was just playing around. Don’t get me wrong—it’s fine to question what I’m telling you. If I’m shoveling some bullshit, sure, by all means, go ahead and call me on it. But do you gotta be all ugly about it? Gotta try to put me down? Where’s that attitude coming from? Huh? Any ideas about that?”
Red wasn’t going to say it, but he had no doubt the attitude came directly from Betty Jean. She was slowly turning Billy Don against Red. Poisoning their friendship. Trying to split them up. He knew for sure she wasn’t happy about Red being the best man at their wedding. Red needed to call attention to the problem—but subtly, so Billy Don would figure it out himself.
They rode in silence for a few moments. Red turned right on Highway 281, heading south toward the small ranch where they would be working today.
Finally Billy Don let out a sigh and said, “I’m sorry, Red. Didn’t mean to be a jerk.”
After a beat, Red said, “I appreciate that.”
“So go ahead and say what you was gonna say.”
Red took a sip of coffee from the to-go mug between his legs, then said, “If the cops was watching me, and they knew I knew, and they wanted to trick me into thinking they wasn’t watching, they’d do exactly what the sheriff just done—call me up and flat-out say they ain’t watching me. To throw me off. But I ain’t falling for it.”
Billy Don didn’t say anything right away, and after a few more minutes, Red realized Billy Don wasn’t going to respond at all. Fine. Red didn’t really care whether Billy Don believed him or not.
“And just because we don’t see ’em watching,” Red said, “that don’t mean they ain’t. They could be using one of them drones. They could be flying one over us right now, just watchi
ng. Tracking me.”
“Drones?”
“Yep.”
“Just so I’m following you,” Billy Don said, “you think the Blanco County Sheriff’s Department has a drone, and they’re using it to keep tabs on you?”
“Why do you always question everything I tell you?”
“Only because so much of it turns out to be wrong.”
“Not this time,” Red said. “Drones are everywhere nowadays. You need to read more, Billy Don. Understand how the world works. It’s almost cute how naïve you are.”
Billy Don rolled his eyes.
Red pulled his phone from his pocket and held it up. “Technology is an amazing thing,” he said. “For instance, this right here ain’t just a phone, it’s a full-on computer. And it fits right in my pocket. Ain’t nothin’ but a cheap Korean knockoff that I bought at the pawn shop a few weeks ago, but it does things nobody woulda imagined ten years ago.”
“What’s your point?” Billy Don said.
“Hang on a sec and I’ll show you.”
Red opened the phone’s Internet browser.
“Gonna use one powerful technology to show you another powerful technology,” he said.
But the browser wouldn’t load.
“Well, shit,” Red said. “Signal’s too weak. I’ll show you later, but did you know them whack jobs at PETA have got drones they sell on their website so people can harass hunters like you and me? You can buy one for about three hundred bucks. Then you fly it over and record video. Think I’m making that shit up?”
Red could tell that Billy Don was starting to believe what he was saying.
“They call ’em Air Angels,” Red said. “PETA does. Like they’re saving the poor deer or turkeys or wild pigs from the likes of you and me. Point is, if PETA has drones and anybody can buy one, it ain’t much of a stretch to think the sheriff has one. Five years ago, yeah, no way. But today? That kinda shit’s cheap, reliable, and easy to use. Why wouldn’t the sheriff have one? Maybe the game warden, too.”
“If that’s all true,” Billy Don said, “it’s starting to piss me off. I don’t like being watched.”
“See, now you’re getting it,” Red said. “Seems like every day we lose another one of our freedoms.”
“I ever see one of them drones,” Billy Don, “I’m shooting it out of the sky.”
“Target practice,” Red said.
“Hell, yeah.
“It’s called a neuralyzer, by the way,” Red said.
“What is?”
“The gizmo from Men In Black. It’s a neuralyzer.”
“Wait a sec. You’re saying that’s real, too? It really exists? Just like phones and drones?”
Red couldn’t tell if Billy Don genuinely wondered if the neuralyzer existed, or if he was back to poking fun.
“Well, sure it exists,” Red said. “It’d be simple enough to create something like that. But in this case, the sheriff wouldn’t have one of those. The Feds would hog that technology all for themselves. And they’d do their best to keep it a secret. That’s why people think it’s only something from a movie.”
Phil Colby had just stepped outside his house—preparing to drive to the upper pasture to feed his cattle—when he heard the low rumble of an engine. He assumed it was one of the six deer hunters who leased a spot on his ranch every fall. He could usually hear the hunters coming and going, because the main road passed within one hundred yards of Colby’s house. Then the road forked, where the hunters would bear left and stop at the small sign-in shed before proceeding to the interior of the ranch.
But something about this engine wasn’t quite right. Colby realized now that he’d memorized the sound of each hunter’s vehicle. This wasn’t one of them.
Colby lingered in the open driver’s side door of his truck and waited. In ten or fifteen seconds, the vehicle would emerge from behind a grove of cedars, into an open area, and then it would be visible.
He waited.
It sounded like a diesel engine. Big vehicle. And now Colby finally saw it—a black Ford F350 with tinted windows. Almost certainly the same one from the run-in Colby had had at the convenience store in Johnson City.
The Ford reached the fork in the road and came to a stop. If it went left, Colby would have to go after it, or call the sheriff’s department and report the intrusion. But after a few seconds, the driver wheeled right and came toward the house.
Colby ducked into his truck and removed the .30-30 from the rifle rack mounted in his rear window. He leaned the little carbine against the driver’s seat, muzzle pointing downward toward the floorboard. Discreet, but quickly accessible, should the need arise.
Colby emerged from his truck and stood waiting. The black Ford was coming slowly—still thirty yards away—but the driver was now visible through the windshield. As Colby had suspected, it was the same enormous pock-faced man who’d bumped into Colby’s truck at the gas pumps.
Why is it, Colby wondered, that so many assholes drive big diesel trucks? Less than a month earlier, Colby had had problems with a trio of East Texas dog runners who had driven their big Dodge diesel to Blanco County for the pig-hunting contest. Colby was sick of dealing with morons like that, so it was tempting to pull his cell phone from his pocket and place a call. Let Marlin or Bobby Garza know what was going on. But no. Colby himself didn’t know exactly what was going on.
So he simply watched the Ford come closer.
The man drove as if he had every right to be on Colby’s ranch. When he was twenty yards out, he let off the gas. He coasted to within ten feet of Colby’s front bumper, then came to a stop. He opened the door and stepped out, leaving the engine running.
“You’re trespassing,” Colby said. He remained where he was, between the driver’s door and the cab of his truck.
How had this man tracked him down? The county tax rolls online, most likely.
“You owe me five hundred dollars,” the man said. His voice was flat. Totally void of emotion.
“I don’t believe I do,” Colby said, “and I’m going to repeat that you’re trespassing. Time for you to hit the road, my friend.”
“You damaged my bumper,” the man said. “It’s going to cost you five hundred dollars to repair it.”
“Sue me.”
“I intend to leave here today with five hundred dollars in cash.”
“I might have some used lottery tickets lying around,” Colby said. “Want me to check?”
“You need to show some responsibility for your actions,” the man said.
Colby could feel himself losing his cool. “I think perhaps you are not entirely rational,” he said. “Now get off my property. You are not welcome here. Can I make it any more clear?”
The man did not reply. He simply stood and stared.
“Last chance,” Colby said, “before I call the cops.”
The man began walking forward. Colby leaned into his truck and came out with the .30-30. He quickly worked the lever down and up, chambering a round.
The man stopped eight feet away.
“Either you put that down,” he said, “or I’ll take it away and beat you to death with it.”
Colby’s heart was thundering now. He held the rifle firmly against his shoulder. “I don’t know what type of person you’re used to dealing with, but if you think I won’t blow a hole in your chest, you’re mistaken.”
Colby was prepared for anything, but the man didn’t move for a full ten seconds. Then he said, “I’ll catch up to you at a different time, when you don’t have the rifle with you.”
It wasn’t easy, but Colby resisted the urge to say anything in reply.
The big man turned, climbed into his truck—which visibly shifted and settled lower with the extra weight—and began to back up.
Colby dropped the rifle hammer into the safety position, then took out his cell phone and snapped a photo of the rear of the Ford.
“Your parents?” Nicole said.
“They’re both gone,”
Heather said.
It was dark in Heather’s trailer. Cold. A radio was playing so low, Nicole couldn’t make out the current song. Was it Keith Urban?
“You told me once you had a sister,” Nicole said.
“Haven’t talked to her in six or seven years,” Heather said. “Don’t even know where she’s living anymore.”
“It would be worth a few calls, wouldn’t it? Try to track her down?”
“She wouldn’t do it. Not unless there was some cash involved. Seriously.”
Nicole was perched on the edge of a ratty easy chair. Heather was slumped into an equally ratty sofa. There was no denying that Heather did not look well.
“No other siblings?” Nicole said.
“Nope.”
“Any cousins?”
“A bunch, yeah, but I haven’t seen any of ’em since I was a kid and we moved down from Arkansas. Might as well walk up and ask a stranger on the street. Just ain’t no way it’s gonna happen.”
“Same with aunts and uncles?”
“Yep.”
Nicole took a deep breath. It was almost as if Heather had resigned herself to a slow, inevitable deterioration and eventual death.
“Friends?”
“Sure, I’ve got friends. None of ’em can afford to miss work for two or three weeks. They all got jobs, and kids to look after.”
“Have you actually asked any of them?”
“Nope, and I can’t see as how I could. If the positions was reversed and one of them asked me for a kidney...well, I can’t say for sure I’d do it. So I can’t expect them to do it for me, can I?”
Nicole was frustrated at the lack of options for Heather to pursue. If only Jared was old enough to donate.
“What’s your blood type?” Nicole asked.
19
After meeting with Lem Tucker, Marlin had to respond to a call about a possible poaching violation, which turned out to be a hunter who was mixed up about the location of a day lease. By late morning, he was seated at his desk in his office at the sheriff’s department. He logged on to his computer and quickly confirmed that the rumors on the Endicott Empire fan forum had some foundation: Aaron Endicott had a criminal history, and it was a fairly extensive one.
