Better Dead

by Pamela Kopfler

  “Nope,” Jake said.

  “He’s your dad, Jake.”

  “Don’t you start, too.” He nodded toward Dot. “She’s already lectured me.” He leaned on his elbows and drilled Holly with a stare. “And I’m not going to look him up now, because he doesn’t feel like working.”

  “But, Jake. What if he’s sick?”

  “He’s not sick. He’s drunk.” His eyes told her the conversation was over, but she couldn’t let it go. She’d love to see her mother or her grandmother in any state just once more.

  “I think we should go check on him.”

  “We? Look, you don’t have a pony in this race, and I’m not betting on Mackie ever again.” He leaned back and folded his arms. “Let it go.”

  “I do have a pony in this race. I need my window fixed.”

  “I’ll fix it.”

  “You’ve got free room and board. What will this cost me?”

  “Don’t mention him again.”

  “Fine. I’ll check on Mackie myself.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Mackie wasn’t Holly’s business, but they weren’t so different. Neither of them had close family around, and the town looked after them. Granted, people in Delta Ridge stuck their noses where they shouldn’t, but she’d never felt alone. Now she was doing what she should to look out for one of her own, whether Jake liked it or not. If Mackie was drunk, so be it. But he could be ill or injured.

  As Holly drove down River Road, she strained to see the overgrown turnrow that served as a dirt road to Mackie’s place. She turned off the blacktop onto the dirt road lined with twelve-foot-high sugarcane. Her Tahoe sank into ruts from tractors that had cultivated the field. Take-out blue plates slid across the passenger seat when she hit a deep rut. The road didn’t look like it had been traveled in months.

  The turnrow widened at the back of the field. A stand of oak trees and thick undergrowth marked the old McCann homeplace at the base of the levee. She parked her Tahoe and looked at the shack that had once been an overseer’s cottage, never a fine home. But now it was uninhabitable. A trailer covered with a coat of green algae stood nearby, with Mackie’s rusted-out truck parked beside it.

  Holly grabbed one of the blue-plate lunches then climbed out of her Tahoe. If Jake was right and Mackie was drunk, a hearty meal might help sober him up. A deep layer of oak leaves crunched under her feet, releasing the musky smell of fall. She trudged past the dilapidated cottage and toward the trailer. From the coat of dust on the old truck’s windshield, she suspected that Mackie hadn’t gone anywhere in weeks.

  A deep, low growl came from under the truck.

  Her breath caught as the ugliest dog she’d ever seen crawled out from under the truck. He looked like a cross between a wolf and a shar-pei and probably answered to Killer.

  “Nice dog,” she said in the most calming voice she could muster, considering her words might be her last.

  The mutt’s lip curled in a snarl.

  Her mouth went dry.

  The animal held his back left leg off the ground, and it dangled there as though it was paralyzed. Dried scabs dotted his hip.

  No wonder he’s so grouchy. He’s hurt.

  She took a slow step in the dog’s direction. The hair on the mutt’s back rose, and he shot in her direction with a three-legged gait that would easily overcome her two-legged run. She snatched open the blue-plate box and hurled a piece of roast at him. His three legs skidded as he slid to the spot where the roast had landed in the dirt.

  Holly glanced over her shoulder at her truck and then at Mackie’s camper to see which was closer. Sure as sin the camper was closer.

  Lordy. Don’t show fear. Dogs can smell it, and this mutt may eat it.

  “Want some more, boy?” She tried to control her shaky voice and tossed another piece of roast to him.

  The mutt caught the meat in midair. He swallowed without chewing, then settled on his haunches and licked his lips.

  “That’s right, boy. We’re making friends.” She reached for another piece of beef. Oh, crapola. No more beef. She dangled a green bean from her fingertips. “Want this?” She flung the bean across the yard.

  The dog took off in a three-legged trot and sniffed out the bean.

  A few green beans later, she and the dog had an understanding. She gave him food, and he let her live as she made her way to Mackie’s trailer.

  She pitched the Styrofoam container, with the remaining mashed potatoes, gravy, and banana pudding, toward the old truck. As soon as the dog sank his nose in the grub, she yanked the doorknob on the trailer door. Relieved to find the door unlocked, she stepped inside.

  The trailer smelled of whiskey, stale cigarettes, and dirty laundry.

  “Mackie?” She sniffed the rank air as she turned a full circle in the room, which served as a kitchen, dining room, and den. A metallic ping pulsed through the room as a steady drip of water hit a pot crusted with something unidentifiable. The plaid sofa against the wall held piles of dingy laundry, and a lamp lay overturned near a worn-out recliner.

  The door at the rear of the kitchen stood ajar. She took a deep breath. Mackie could be sick or worse back there.

  “Mackie. It’s Holly Davis. You back there?”

  Holly slid the pocket door open to a dark room. She rubbed her hand over the wall until she found the light switch. A dusty fixture cast a dim light on an unmade, empty bed surrounded by hundreds of books. Everyone, including her, saved their old paperbacks for him, but she hadn’t realized he never passed them on. She relaxed a bit. An empty bed was a good thing.

  At least he wasn’t dead. Maybe he was off on a drunk, like Jake had said. Unless he’d collapsed in the bathroom. She navigated through the stacks of books to double pocket doors, then slid both doors open at once. On one side, bare hangers dangled like skeletons between well-worn shirts. On the other stood an empty compact bathroom.

  Mackie had left dishes in the sink, laundry everywhere, and his lamp tipped over. Maybe he’d left in a hurry. But why?

  Holly walked back into the living area. Jake had grown up in this place. Was it any wonder the only way he wanted to see Delta Ridge was in his rearview mirror?

  Aside from the squalor, something was terribly wrong. If he was out on a drunk, Mackie might leave dishes in the sink and laundry on the sofa, but he wouldn’t have left his dog to fend for himself. Not the Mackie she knew. Not if he could help it.

  She dug her cell phone out of her purse and called the Gazette.

  Miss Penny, one of the Deltas, answered and put her through to Jake.

  “I’m at your dad’s place. You’ve got to get out here.”

  Jake blew a hard breath into the phone. “Is he passed out?”

  “No.” She paced across the kitchen. “He’s not here. The place is a wreck. I think something happened to him.”

  “Something happened, all right,” Jake said. “He got plastered somewhere and hasn’t sobered up yet.”

  “No. This is serious.”

  “Look, Holly. I appreciate your concern for Mackie, but I’m busy here. He’ll come back when he dries out. I promise.”

  “If you don’t come, I’m calling Sheriff Walker.”

  After a long pause, Jake said, “Mackie wouldn’t appreciate that.”

  “So you’ll come?”

  “Nope.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  She hesitated. “I can’t leave.”

  “Why not?”

  Holly bent a yellowed mini-blind and looked out at the dog, who appeared to be guarding the door. “Mackie’s dog won’t let me out of the trailer.”

  * * *

  Jake could have lived his entire life without ever setting foot on this place again. Nothing had changed. Mackie’s twenty-year-old Dodge Ram truck and raggedy trailer looked just like they had when Jake escaped from Delta Ridge.

  A knot tightened in his stomach as he glanced at the house next door. Mackie had locked that door and m
oved into the trailer after Jake’s mother left. He’d shipped Jake off to his grandmother, but they had visited Mackie. The last visit became permanent, because his grandmother got sick and died when Jake was twelve. For years, Jake could see every detail of the house in his mind, but not now.

  He opened the car door and stepped out. A puff of gray dust scattered around his shoes. In Louisiana, if you stepped on bare ground, you hit either a dust bowl or a mud hole, depending on the time of year. It might as well have been a cow patty. Jake didn’t want to be here. And wouldn’t be if not for Holly meddling in his business.

  “Jake,” Holly yelled. “Watch out for the dog.”

  He looked up to find her waving from a crank-out window in the trailer.

  A scruffy oversize mutt stood at attention, staring him down from the front of the trailer. Jake slid two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. The mongrel’s ears perked.

  “Come, Dog,” Jake said as he slapped his thigh.

  Tail wagging, the mutt trotted to Jake’s side.

  Holly opened the door and leaned out. “How’d you do that?”

  Jake held his hand out for Dog to sniff, then rubbed his head. “It helps to know his name.”

  “Dog?”

  “Mackie has called every dog he’s had Dog. It makes remembering its name under the influence easier.” Jake eyed Dog’s lame leg and then reached to inspect the mutt’s haunches.

  Dog growled.

  Jake pulled his hand back. “Hurts, huh?”

  Wielding a Louisville Slugger in a death grip, Holly stepped from the trailer. Her cheeks flushed as wisps of curls blew across her face. Normally, a woman packing a baseball bat wouldn’t be a turn-on, but nothing had been normal when it came to Holly.

  “Were you going to save me from this vicious dog?” he asked.

  As if on cue, Dog licked Jake’s hand.

  “What are you? A dog whisperer?” she asked. “And what are you grinning about?”

  He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “You.” Jake crossed the distance between them. He took the bat from her. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  She pulled back. “Not until you come inside and see what I’m talking about.”

  “We don’t have any business in Mackie’s trailer.”

  “Just come inside. If you don’t think something is wrong, I’ll go.” She grabbed him by the hand and squeezed it. “I promise.”

  Why was it so hard to tell her no? He mounted the steps and entered the trailer. If King Kong had picked up the place and shook the thing, it wouldn’t have looked worse. Jake shrugged. “Same old Mackie. Let’s go.”

  “Wait.” She motioned toward the toppled lamp. “What about this?”

  “He knocked it over and was too drunk to pick it up. Look around, Holly. You think he cares if a lamp tips over?” Jake scanned the cluttered room, and something unusual caught his eye.

  On the floor next to the recliner, that he’d watched his father pass out in too many times, was a near-full bottle of whiskey and a half-empty glass. Never had he known Mackie to leave a drop of whiskey in a glass.

  Holly touched his arm. “I’m worried.”

  He crossed the room, then squatted beside the bottle and peered into the glass. Ants floated on top of the whiskey, and a few clung to the sticky sides where the booze had evaporated. Mackie hadn’t been home in a long time.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Jake rubbed his hands over his thighs. He couldn’t use logic to figure out why a drunk had left a bottle of booze untouched. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe something wasn’t right, even for Mackie.

  * * *

  Holly knew something was wrong. She walked to where Jake squatted beside the recliner.

  His brow creased with worry as he fingered a half-empty whiskey glass on the floor.

  “You think something happened to Mackie, too. Don’t you?” she asked.

  Jake looked up. It was as though he’d put on an expressionless mask. “I doubt it.”

  She trailed behind him as he left the trailer, but stopped short when he marched past Dog. The mutt gave her an eye, as if to say, “Stay put, or else,” and then he fell in step behind Jake. They both disappeared behind the trailer.

  Holly ventured down the steps and peeked under the trailer. Empty whiskey bottles littered the black dirt. Beyond those, she saw Jake’s feet and Dog’s paws near a dripping water faucet and a crumpled sack of dog food that looked like it’d been licked clean. That explained Dog’s appetite.

  Jake kicked the empty sack and muttered under his breath, then tromped back around the trailer. Holly jumped back up to the top step as Jake and Dog approached.

  Jake’s eyes flashed with anger. “I’m done here.”

  “What about Mackie?”

  “He’s fine,” he said, as though the words were toxic.

  “Why are you so mad?”

  “Because he went off on a drunk and left his dog here to starve.”

  “He wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “You don’t know Mackie. He keeps a bicycle chained to the faucet on the other side of the trailer. It’s gone, which means he left and planned to be too drunk to drive home, or he was drunk when he left.”

  “But that doesn’t explain where he is now.”

  “You can’t explain a drunk. All I know is when he’s drunk, he forgets about everything.” He squatted and rubbed Dog’s head.

  “But, Jake, what if Mackie isn’t off on a drunk? What if someone came and took him?”

  Jake blew out a heavy breath. “Why? Who’d want Mackie?”

  “I don’t know. I just can’t imagine him leaving his dog without any food or anything.”

  “Why not? He left his own kid home alone to go on a drunk plenty.”

  Her stomach knotted around the thought of Jake as a boy, left alone and scared.

  Jake gave Dog another pat, then stood. “Mackie always left a sack of dog food under the trailer. Dog just ate it too fast, then went looking for something to eat and got hit by a car.”

  Holly looked at the baseball bat, which he’d leaned against the trailer door. “Or a baseball bat.”

  “Now, that Mackie wouldn’t do.”

  “What if Dog got hurt trying to protect Mackie from whoever took him?”

  “Your imagination is working too hard. Mackie probably doesn’t have more than twenty bucks in his pocket on his best day and doesn’t owe a dime to anyone. Besides, his bike is gone.”

  Holly lifted her hands in the air. “Okay, maybe he wasn’t abducted, but I’m still worried about him.”

  “You’ve got a good heart, but you’re worrying about nothing. This is how Mackie rolls.” He reached for Holly’s hand. “Let Dog sniff your hand so you can make friends.”

  She pulled her hands in close to her chest.

  “If you don’t make friends with Dog, it’s going to be hard for you to get to your car.”

  She chewed her bottom lip. “I’d rather keep my distance.”

  “Suit yourself.” He scooped her into his arms as if he was carrying her over a threshold. “We’ll do it the hard way.”

  She squirmed. “Put me down.”

  “You sure? What about Dog?”

  She eyed the mutt over Jake’s shoulder, then looked back at Jake. Dog might take her leg off, but he wouldn’t break her heart.

  CHAPTER 11

  An hour later and minus Dog, Jake walked into the Gazette. He had stayed at the River Run Animal clinic until the vet put Dog under to patch his hip. Jake would pick him up in a couple of days, if Mackie didn’t surface. And if he could last a couple more days around Holly.

  He hadn’t been in town a week, and already he was cleaning up after Mackie and couldn’t keep his mind off Holly. Nothing had changed in Delta Ridge.

  “Good afternoon, Jake,” said Penny, Sam’s plump assistant who had probably been eligible for retirement twenty years ago. After surviving the encounter she and the other bridge
club ladies had with Holly’s fabricated ghost, he was certain Penny would pass an EKG easily.

  “I’ve had better.” He flipped through the old-fashioned paper messages Sam preferred. “No new messages.”

  “None today.”

  He dug a chocolate Kiss out of the glass jar on her desk. “What does Sam do around here, anyway?”

  She chuckled. “Not much.”

  “Now that the paper is out, what do I do the rest of the week?”

  She shrugged. “Sam sniffs out stories and tells me to write them.”

  He popped the chocolate in his mouth, then strolled back to Sam’s office. The chocolate melted as he plunked himself down in Sam’s chair and propped up his feet.

  All he had to do was make a token appearance, but he’d enjoyed putting the paper together on Friday night. It reminded him of when he’d worked nights with Sam in high school and the pride they’d taken in making the Gazette the best it could be. He picked up the latest edition, then thumbed through the paper and smiled.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, you little turd.” Sam’s gruff voice jerked Jake’s feet off the desk, like he’d been caught loafing on the job.

  “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on vacation.”

  “I can see if I’d stayed gone much longer, I wouldn’t have a paper to come back to.”

  “Bull. This thing practically prints itself.”

  “Not quite.” He took off his sunglasses.

  Jake nearly choked on his chocolate. Sam had a perfect replica of his sunglasses branded over his eyes in lily white.

  Sam’s woolly brows bunched over fiery blue eyes. “What in Sam Hill is so funny?”

  “Have you looked in the mirror?”

  “Oh. Too much vacation.” He stuffed his sunglasses in his shirt pocket and pulled a pair of reading glasses from another pocket.

  “You saved me a phone call. I was going to call you back to work.”

  “You catch the smugglers?”

  “Sorry, Sam. This assignment is a bust.”

  Sam adjusted his glasses and peered over them. “You didn’t find anything strange going on at Holly Grove?”

  “Strange, yeah.” He grabbed the Gazette and gave it to Sam. “Page three. Holly thinks she has a ghost, or she wants one. I’m not sure which. Nelda is on strike because of said ghost. And the Deltas sent Holly to the hospital for an overdose that wasn’t. I’d say everything going on out there is strange but not illegal.”