Buck Fever (Blanco County Mysteries)

by Ben Rehder

  With each kick, the man was backing up a little farther to get maximum force. On what was to be his last effort (whether he intended it that way or not), the man accidentally stepped backward off the porch, windmilling his arms wildly as he tumbled down the stairs. He landed hard, his head bouncing smartly on a large limestone rock in Marlin's rustic backyard. Anyone listening would have said the impact sounded like a shopper thumping a ripe melon.

  At ten-fifteen P.M. on Thursday, October 28, Barney Weaver, Louise's ex-husband, lay unconscious at John Marlin's back door.

  The first thing John Marlin saw after winding his way down the familiar county road was a gauntlet of deputies’ cars, volunteer firefighters’ trucks, and two ambulances, one on each side of the road. Pulling through the chain of vehicles, he saw Sheriff Herbert Mackey leaning over the hood of his cruiser, leveling a rifle at the oat field on the Circle S Ranch. A deputy was training a spotlight on a massive white-tailed buck, not fifty yards away, prancing around in the field.

  Marlin parked his truck and climbed out. As he approached the crowd surrounding the sheriff, he heard Mackey say, “Gentlemen, you're about to learn something about the fine art of marksmanship.” Several of the men murmured their approval.

  “What's up?” Marlin said to the crowd in general.

  Bill Tatum, one of the sheriff's deputies, answered. “Got a crazy buck on our hands, John. Wounded, too.”

  Marlin looked out at the buck. The animal seemed to know that a rifle was being aimed at it. The big deer would run quickly back and forth across the field and then come to an abrupt stop. Then it would bound on all four legs like a kid on a pogo stick. Marlin could occasionally glimpse a thin trail of dark-red blood running down one of the animals forelegs.

  “Looks like a flesh wound to me,” Marlin said to nobody in particular. When no one responded, Marlin walked over and stood next to Sheriff Mackey. “Do you really think this is necessary, Herb?”

  Marlin knew it bothered Sheriff Mackey when he called him by his abbreviated first name rather than his official title.

  Mackey raised his large belly off the hood of his Chevy, spit a stream of tobacco juice at Marlin's feet and said, “Don't see as how I got a choice. Damn buck's gone nuts. Nearly gored us all when we were fetching Trey.”

  “Trey Sweeney?” Marlin wished someone would tell him the full story.

  Bill Tatum spoke up again. “You know about the nine-one-one caller, right? Well, Trey's the one in the deer costume.” Tatum nodded toward one of the ambulances just departing. “He took a pretty good hit across the ribs, but he should be all right.”

  Marlin shook his head and grinned. Trey Sweeney was a state wildlife biologist and Blanco County native. Known for his eccentric behavior, Sweeney had gained national attention when he traveled to Yellowstone Park and holed up for three days with a hibernating black bear. His intention was to prove that the bears are not territorial and will attack only when their cubs or their food supply is threatened. After three days, Trey was certain that his theory was correct. Then the bear, apparently unaware of Trey's presence for the first seventy-two hours, awoke with a yawn, scratched his privates, and tore Trey's right ear off. (The chief reason Trey wore his hair long nowadays.) Trey still counted the whole episode as a victory, maintaining that the bear was only exhibiting post-hibernation playfulness. Nationally recognized wildlife authorities disagreed.

  “So what's the story on the buck?” Marlin asked.

  “Trey told us it was one of his test deer,” Tatum said, referring to the small radio collars Trey had fitted on several deer on the ranch years earlier. The biologist had been conducting an ongoing study on the nocturnal movements of whitetails. “That's all he said. Except for asking us not to shoot it.”

  The crowd turned toward Sheriff Mackey, still holding his rifle. “That deer is obviously a danger to the community,” Mackey said, feeling a little foolish as he looked around the isolated pasture.

  Yeah, and he'd look damn good on your living-room wall, Marlin thought.

  The sheriff shifted uneasily as the crowd remained silent. Most of the men were hunters and couldn't stand to see a deer killed in such an unsporting manner.

  Finally the sheriff asked bitterly, “All right, then. Anyone else got any brilliant ideas?”

  “I say we tranquilize him.” Marlin said.

  “You gotta be kidding. Then what? You gonna play like Sigman Fraud and ask him what's troubling him?” Several of the men smiled.

  Marlin started to reply when one of the deputies spoke up. “Sheriff, I got Roy Swank on my cellular.”

  The sheriff opened his mouth as if to say something, then shuffled over to the deputy's car and grabbed the phone. The men could not hear the ensuing conversation, but Mackey gestured wildly several times. After a couple of moments, the sheriff returned with a tense look on his face.

  “You win, smart boy,” he said to Marlin. “That's one of Swank's trophies and he don't want it killed.”

  Marlin tried not to gloat, but he felt a sense of relief. Just being around Sheriff Mackey made him a little edgy. The man was obstinate, obnoxious, and downright rude. More than once they had butted heads over the finer letters of the hunting laws, chiefly because Mackey was one of the county's biggest poachers.

  Wordlessly, Marlin walked over to his vehicle and reached into the backseat of the extended cab. He took out a hard-sided gun case and removed the tranquilizer rifle inside. After loading it properly, he walked up to the fence, took aim, and made a perfect shot.

  THE POACHERS WERE holed up in Red's mobile home. Billy Don was sprawled on the couch underneath the velvet Willie Nelson painting as Red bent over him, using pliers to pull cactus thorns out of his left hand.

  “What'd you have to go and push me for?” Billy Don glowered at Red.

  “Because you couldn't get your fat ass back through that fence. Somebody needs a little help from Jenny Craig,” Red said as he plucked at a particularly stubborn thorn.

  “Damn, that hurts! Take it easy, will ya?”

  “Hold on. You need a little medicine.” Red stumbled into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of tequila. He unscrewed the cap and took a gulp. Then he shuddered from head to toe, like a dog shaking water off its back. He passed the bottle to Billy Don. “Take a few swigs of that.”

  Billy Don tipped the bottle to his lips and took a mouthful. “What is this shit, Clorox?” He took another big drink.

  Red sat down on the coffee table, which used to be a packing crate, and stared hard at Billy Don. He knew he'd have to spell things out for him. “Now, I don't know exactly what happened out there tonight. But I do know we could be in deep shit for it.”

  Billy Don said nothing as he tipped the bottle again.

  Red watched him closely. “You and me known each other for a long time, Billy Don. I wanna know, can I trust you?”

  “ ’Course you can. What're you talking about?”

  “If word gets around what we done, we could both be in trouble. But especially me, since I did the shootin’.”

  Billy Don nodded at him with liquor-moistened eyes.

  “But you're in it, too, ’cause you was there and you helped me,” Red continued. “So both our asses are on the line.”

  “How we gonna get caught? Wasn't nobody around to see us.”

  “But still, we should have a good story. Just in case anything comes up. You follow me?”

  “My momma didn't raise no dummies.”

  “All right, then here's the plan.” Red leaned back and smiled, like he'd just authored the theory of relativity. “We was here all night watchin’ ’rasslin’ on the TV.”

  Billy Don shook his head. “Shit no. Everybody knows that's all fake.”

  “What're you talkin’ about?”

  “That pro ’rasslin's a buncha crap.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is too.”

  “The hell are you, some kind of expert?”

  “They punch like a bunch o
f faggots and that ain't blood, that's Karo syrup with food coloring in it.”

  “The hell it is, I seen the Big Bomber versus Iron Man down at the Coliseum and they punch harder'n hell and goddamn, Billy Don, what in the hell are we talkin’ about? Just listen to me. We gotta have a story. You back me up, I back you up.”

  “I ain't gonna tell no story about watchin’ ’rasslin’ ’cause everybody knows that shit's all fake. People will think I'm some kinda dullard. Plus they'll know we're lying.”

  Red took a deep breath. Sometimes talking to Billy Don could be as taxing as talking to the foreigners who ran the convenience stores in Austin. As far as Red was concerned, if you can't speak the language, you shouldn't be let in the country. He often thought all of the immigrants should be tested on their communication capabilities, and if they couldn't understand such basic terms as “I need a pack of Red Man, Pedro,” or “Give me some Marlboro Lights, Habib,” then they should be deported.

  But this was his friend, so he paused for a minute and then smiled at Billy Don and said, “Okay, no ’rasslin’. What do you think we oughta say?”

  “How about the Nashville Network? We just say we was watchin’ music videos all night.” Billy Don lifted the bottle once again. “I like that Shania Twain.”

  Red thought it over. He had to admit, it was a good idea. There wasn't a single video they hadn't seen, so they could easily describe several of them if asked. Of course, Red wasn't a fan of Shania Twain because she was Canadian. Talk about fake. Red shuddered to think about the future of our great country when something as sacred as country music was being taken over by foreigners.

  “That's perfect.” Red clapped Billy Don on the shoulder. “Just you and me and Shania all night long.”

  But Billy Don had already passed out on the couch, still clutching the bottle of tequila in his uninjured right hand.

  John Marlin pulled into his winding gravel driveway and proceeded up to the house. He cut the engine, jumped out of the truck, and walked around to the rear of the vehicle. The deer was lying peacefully, with its head up, in the bed of the truck. Marlin smiled as he looked up at the sky full of stars that seemed to wink back at him. What a night, he thought. Sometimes things just seem to turn out your way. He couldn't wait to spread the good news in the morning.

  He turned back to the deer. “Easy, boy,” he spoke reassuringly as he lowered the tailgate. The deer struggled to its feet, still wobbly from the tranquilizer. Its head hung low like a vulture's. Marlin spent a few minutes just stroking the deer's coat, talking to it in soft tones. After a time, the deer seemed to become more alert and regain some of its coordination. Slowly, like a nurse assisting a patient, Marlin helped the drugged buck out of the back of the truck and onto the ground.

  Marlin prodded the deer gently toward the fenced side yard of his house. “Come on, big fella. You remember this place, don't you? We'll get you all set up with some water and corn. Might even have a little alfalfa in the barn.”

  Man and deer proceeded to walk tentatively toward the gate, with the buck occasionally wavering like a boxer who's gone too many rounds.

  Behind the house, Barney Weaver was staggering off just as unsurely into the night.

  Sixty-eight-year-old Junior Barstow was the proud sole proprietor of the Snake Farm and Indian Artifact Showplace on Highway 281 just south of Johnson City, a town with about nine hundred residents. Highway 281 ran a north-south course through Blanco County, dissecting Johnson City, which was in the center of the county, and Blanco, another small town fifteen miles to the south. Barstow took advantage of the traffic between the two communities by placing small billboards two hundred yards from the Showplace on both sides of the highway. Hand-painted by Junior himself, the nearly legible signs read:

  LIVE SNAKES! INDAIN ARROWHEADS!

  Directly ahead!

  Thrill the kids! Its a scientific

  and historic wonderland!

  (Visa excepted)

  As promising as the name sounds, visitors were often disappointed when they first saw the Showplace, which consisted of three dilapidated structures: a drooping double-wide mobile home, a garishly colored former fireworks stand, and a Blue Bell ice-cream truck with no wheels. (The truck provided cold storage for deer carcasses. Barstow was also in the business of deer processing and taxidermy.)

  Appearances aside, the Showplace was actually a legitimate attraction. Barstow had collected more than two hundred indigenous and exotic snakes, from common Western rattlers and hog snakes to exotic cobras and pythons.

  And Barstow’s display of Indian artifacts was in fact one of the most interesting and valuable collections in the Southwest. He had a wide variety of weapons and tools, from common Pedernales point arrowheads to rare Clovis points he had traded and bartered for over the years. Reputable archaeologists and anthropologists from around the country were always amazed that Barstow housed part of his collection in a fireworks stand fortified with a cheap padlock. That is, until Barstow revealed that he placed two of his meanest rattlesnakes in the stand every night.

  Through the years, Barstow had been bitten by a variety of venomous snakes and had suffered some nerve damage. While he could easily maintain his snake and artifact collections, the butchering and taxidermy operations were becoming more and more difficult. After some urging from John Marlin, Barstow had hired Phil Colby to help.

  On the morning of Friday, October 29, Marlin pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Snake Farm and Indian Artifact Showplace.

  Colby had already walked out to meet him. “You ready to grab some breakfast?” he called as he went to shake his best friend's hand.

  Marlin slipped past Colby's hand and gave him a hug instead. Then he gave his friend a mysterious smile. “Guess where I went last night.” Standing in the parking lot, Marlin proceeded to tell Colby about the previous night's events.

  The conversation flowed easily, as it always does between old friends. Marlin and Colby had known each other since boyhood. The Colby family had been in Blanco County for six generations, and at one point they had owned more than thirty thousand acres of prime ranchland. Some of the land was lost in the Depression. Over the years, various family members had moved away and tracts of the Colby property had been sold. By the time Phil Colby was born, the Colby family lived on what remained of the original homestead—four thousand acres of some of the prettiest acreage in Texas, with over a mile of Pedernales River frontage. Rolling hills thick with live oak, Spanish oak, cedar, elm, and madrone trees. John Marlin and Phil Colby had grown up on that ranch—hunting, fishing, and looking for arrowheads. They knew every square inch of it as well as they knew each other.

  Unfortunately, the remainder of the Colby property was now owned by Roy Swank, as part of the Circle S Ranch. A drought a few years earlier had been particularly hard on ranchers throughout Texas. Colby had fallen desperately behind on his property taxes and was nearing bankruptcy. The county had finally set a date in stone, essentially telling Colby to pay up or lose his ranch. As the final due date neared, Colby had thought he had it all figured out. He was going to consolidate all his debt with one large loan from First County Bank in Blanco. The day before the taxes were due, Colby went to the bank to pick up a certified cashier's check. Claude Rundell, the bank president, squirmed in his chair and told Colby that he was sorry, but the loan had been turned down.

  “By who?”

  “Well, many people provide input on these decisions.”

  Colby, struggling to control his well-known temper, stood up and placed both hands flat on the desk in front of him. “Just tell me who makes the final decision.”

  Rundell looked down nervously at his desk. “That would be me.”

  Colby spoke through clenched teeth. “You just told me yesterday that I was approved.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “You gave me your word.”

  “I know, but I'm sorry, it's really not a risk we're prepared to take.” Rundell went on to say that he
couldn't afford the possibility of a default, and that the bank didn't want to end up owning a ranch in these tough economic times.

  Colby did not take the news well. When the deputy arrived, Colby was force-feeding Rundell his own toupee. In the end, though, Rundell declined to press charges.

  Losing the ranch had put Phil Colby in a deep depression for many months. He lived for a while with Marlin, who was nearly as devastated by the loss. Now, as Marlin neared the end of his story, he hoped he had a small bit of news that could lift his friend's spirits a little.

  “You're all excited because Trey got himself shot?” Colby asked.

  “No, let me finish: So Sheriff Mackey wanted to shoot this buck. And I have to admit, it was acting pretty weird. But Swank called and didn't want it shot. So I tranquilized it.” Marlin paused and grinned.

  “What in the hell are you gettin’ at?”

  “It wasn't just any buck, Phil. It was Buck. I got him penned up in my yard.”

  A look of wonderment crossed Colby's face as his mouth fell open. Then he stepped forward and returned the hug Marlin had given him earlier.

  THE DOMINOES BEGAN to fall on the afternoon of Friday, October 29.

  Paul and Vicky Cromwell, co-owners of a small ad agency in Austin, were enjoying the sunshine along the shores of the Pedernales River west of Johnson City. He was lazily casting a fishing lure, hoping he wouldn't ruin the peaceful afternoon by actually catching a fish. She was lying in a lawn chair, engrossed in a romance novel.

  I'm no expert, Cromwell thought, but that doesn't look like county-approved paving material. He had spied a tuft of blue tarpaulin protruding from a makeshift low-water crossing that spanned the shallow, gravelly river.

  “Hey, Vick. What do you make of that?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “See that blue stuff sticking out of the dam?”

  Vicky didn't answer. Swell, thought Paul. She's to the part where the muscular young hero embraces the heroine with rugged passion, yet sensitivity. You could hit her with a crowbar and she wouldn't look up from the book.