Dogwood

by Chris Fabry

  “What do you want with me?” I said.

  “You’ll see,” Elmer Fudd said. “Just walk. Thataway.”

  They never got close enough for me to make a move on them. They pointed toward the ridge and we walked for twenty minutes, finally reaching my handiwork. Wood was piled high by the side of the house, and the framing made me proud. It looked professional.

  A haze hung over the two mounds and extended to the valley, but I could make out the lights of cars as they zigzagged their way through town.

  “Right pretty up here,” Elmer said. “Shame you’ll never get to finish this house.” He pulled out his two-way. “Okay, we’re at the house. And bring some of them zip things.”

  “10-4.”

  A plan began to gel in my mind as I sat. I had hidden tools in a loose pile of sawdust in case someone came along. It had been more the product of my time in Clarkston than anything else. I started picking briars from my hands as if I was uninterested in getting away, willing to let whatever happened happen. But I was searching with my toe, digging in the sawdust for something I knew was there.

  “Who you guys hooked up with?” I said. “My brother?”

  Elmer lit up a smoke. “Didn’t know you had one.”

  They both turned their backs, and I reached down and pulled out the box cutter and put it behind me.

  “Don’t make us shoot you to shut you up,” Elmer said. “We’ll do it too.”

  I lifted my hands. “Just trying to make conversation.”

  I opened the box cutter with my thumbnail, working the screw out behind my back, and pulled out one of the razor blades. It wasn’t much, but it would be a weapon if I could get close. There was no question these people weren’t going to let me get off this hill alive.

  Two sets of headlights rounded the curve on Benedict Road and drove to the lower house. After a few minutes, one car headed up the gravel driveway I’d built and parked near us. I thought about running; then I saw the lights on top of the cruiser and Eddie stepped out. He cursed at them for not at least tying my hands or feet together.

  “He’s no dummy,” Elmer said. “If he’d have taken off, I’d have emptied this in his back quick as a wink.”

  Eddie gave Elmer a pair of plastic cuffs.

  I fiddled with the razor blade in my back pocket, wondering if this was the best time to use it. When Eddie turned his full attention to me, I shoved it far enough into the pocket that Elmer wouldn’t see it.

  I kept my hands as far apart as I could as Elmer put the strips around my wrists and I heard the familiar zip.

  “Put another one around the post and hook him to it,” Eddie said.

  Elmer did, and it gave me what I hoped was enough room to get the blade out.

  “Guess you’re wondering why we brought you here,” Eddie said.

  “We?” I said. “This your undercover team?”

  Eddie nodded to Elmer, and he kicked me in the stomach. I would have dropped the razor blade, and I was glad I hadn’t retrieved it.

  “Heard from a friend that you went to talk to Mrs. Spurlock a while back. You have a nice chat?”

  I groaned, unable to breathe.

  “What did you two talk about?”

  When I regained my breath, I said, “Elvis was my friend. Wanted to see if she needed help finding him.”

  Eddie bobbed his head. “Good. I also heard she gave you a letter from him. Addressed to you.”

  I tried not to, but I froze and they could tell.

  Elmer leaned close, pork rinds on his breath. “Doris Jean said you took it with you, but we can’t find it anywhere.”

  The ransacked house.

  When I didn’t answer, Wes took a turn at kicking me, and I thought I heard something crack above my stomach.

  “Should have put a bullet in your head a long time ago, Hatfield,” Eddie said. “Would have saved this town a lot of misery.” He slid a pack of Marlboros from his pocket and lit one. He blew the smoke in my direction. Secondhand smoke was the least of my worries.

  As a child I had always fancied myself as the hero. I had watched enough episodes of The Wild Wild West to know that at the most impossible moment James West could get out of anything, save the beautiful woman, the president, and the shipment of gold. Carson and I pretended we were James West and Artemus Gordon, but he never let me be James.

  On Sunday nights during church I had stared at the ceiling, wondering what would happen if robbers broke in to steal the offering (as if robbers would want the measly tithes we were able to offer). Or my fourth-grade class—when armed men took my teacher hostage, what would I do? I went through a thousand scenarios, always coming out the hero. But now I was in the most remote place on our farm without a prayer, or much of one.

  “All right, let’s try it again,” Eddie said. “What was in the letter?”

  I stared at him. “Is that what this is about? Elvis?”

  Eddie exhaled more smoke and walked back to his car. A radio clicked, and he paused for effect. “Yeah, we’re having some problems up here getting the info we need. Go ahead in the house and wake her up.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Wup, hold on,” Eddie said into the radio. “We might have a breakthrough.”

  I shifted against the pole. “It wasn’t a letter to me. It was a will. Mrs. Spurlock thought it was to me because it had ‘Will’ on the envelope, but it was basically him giving stuff away if anything happened to him.”

  “What did it say about the money?” Eddie said.

  “What money? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He picked up the microphone again and clicked. “False alarm, Randy. Go on in.”

  “I’m telling you the truth!” I said. “It didn’t say anything about money.”

  “Hey, Randy,” Eddie said, “make her scream real loud so we can hear it back here.”

  “Okay!” I yelled. “Call him off. My mother doesn’t know anything about this.”

  “Sorry, Will. She’s in it as thick as you are. Poor old thing down there. She’ll be bawlin’ and tied to a chair before you know it. Randy will keep her company, but he gets an itchy trigger finger.” Eddie straddled the pile of lumber. “We did find something the other day though. Looked like a 20-gauge shotgun. Probably used it with your daddy up in these woods.”

  I struggled against the plastic strips, making it look good.

  “Here’s the way I figure it,” Eddie continued, spitting into the sawdust near me. “The pressure of coming back here, having people hate your guts, your mother always on your back to get a job. Then you finally land some gainful employment and they take it away. All your hard work here means nothing when the land’s gone. And then you find out your brother betrayed you and let ’em take it without a fight.” He looked at Elmer. “Bring me the sack in the backseat.”

  Elmer obeyed and handed Eddie a bottle of Jack Daniels. He opened it, took a swig, then held it out over my head. “Open up, now.”

  I shook my head, but he poured it down my shirt. The other two held my head back and forced my mouth open with a stick while Eddie poured some in. I spit most of it out, but when I started choking, I swallowed some.

  “Never seen anybody so anxious not to get drunk,” Elmer mused.

  “You see what happens when you drink and drive?” Eddie said. “That truck of yours is down there in the rosebushes. They’ll find it in the morning, along with your mother’s body, a victim of circumstance.” He broke the stick in half. “Wait a minute. We’ll find it. Your mama just happened to be there when you snapped.”

  “A real shame,” Wes said.

  “I’ll bet the TV truck will be out here and everything,” Elmer said.

  “So you eased your mother’s suffering, you came up here and made a little bonfire out of your project, and then you stuck the gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  “Nobody who knows me will believe that.”

  Eddie laughed. “Nobody knows you, Will. The people who
did don’t want you around here. You don’t have any friends. Elvis was the last of the bunch committed to you. Plus, Randy down there writes a great suicide note.”

  Wes and Elmer laughed.

  “You royally trashed your life, Will—you know that? You got nothing left. Only makes sense you’d come back here, get upset, and finish what you started.”

  “Okay, so if you’re going to kill me, why should I tell you what was in the letter?”

  “Friends, we have had a breakthrough,” Eddie said, sounding like an old-time preacher. He slapped me on the back and sat close. “That Jack Daniels must have done the trick. Old Will here has finally figured out we mean business. And that’s a good question. Shows your mind is still working, even under duress. You must have learned a thing or two in Clarkston.”

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “I figure you’re the only person on this planet who knows the location of Elvis’s stash. He was your friend. He must have told you something.”

  “I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Not true. He visited you up in Clarkston. Don’t lie to me.”

  “You know they monitor everything we say up there. I meant back here. How do you know he’s not hiding out somewhere with this stash you’re talking about?”

  The others laughed and Eddie looked at the stars. Elmer started a fire in the pit behind us, and I heard something clink on the rocks that surrounded it. Eddie worked with whatever it was, kicking up sparks. “Oh, we know he’s not out there. We actually know exactly where Elvis is right now, and he’s gonna stay there. A long time.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Let’s just say he became intimately acquainted with the Mud River and a couple of cinder blocks.”

  My heart fell, and I was overcome not with fear but with grief for my friend. Things began to clear in my mind, and I steeled myself against the evil surrounding me. “Why didn’t you get the information about his stash before this all happened? That would have saved a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?”

  “He wouldn’t talk. We tried being nice to him, promising him things, but when it came down to it, it was his high tolerance for pain that got him. I guess it was all that scar tissue. He made it hard on us.”

  I was struck with what a small and twisted world Eddie had constructed for himself. He had taken one of God’s most beautiful creations—innocent and guileless—and he was thinking of how hard Elvis had made it on him. “Where’d it happen?”

  “We shouldn’t get too specific,” Eddie said. “You know, in case you want to take my offer.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You tell us where he put it, and we let you and your mama live. You pack your stuff up tonight and never set foot in town again.”

  I knew Eddie would never keep his promise. He had told me too much. I tried to make him think I believed him. “What about the money for the farm? Fair market value is what it said on the notice.”

  “The town will make out a check in your brother’s name. He’s the executor. You can work it out with him. I’ll make sure you get it.”

  I could only imagine what my mother was going through at this moment. She was frightened by the slightest possibility of danger, and if I was right, Randy had a black mask on and was ordering her to stop whimpering. “All right, but I want to make sure my mother is okay. I want to talk with her.”

  “He wants to talk with his mommy,” Eddie said to the others. “Isn’t that sweet?” He got in my face. “You don’t make demands here. You tell us or it’s over. Got it? And it’s over for the . . .” He paused. “Mommy won’t see the sunshine either if you don’t cooperate.”

  I looked at them as I worked the blade out of my pants. I didn’t know how long it would take to cut through the plastic, but I had to get started.

  “Tell us,” Elmer said, “or we’ll tie these cinder blocks around you and drive to the covered bridge.”

  Eddie whirled on him and cursed. “Just shut up!”

  Crickets and insects were out in full force. The fire crackled and warmed my back. A rage was building and I tried to fight it, to keep my head clear, to stay focused on survival and one step ahead of the enemies encompassing me.

  “My mom can stay with my brother,” I said. “He was trying to get her to move in with him before I came back anyway, after my dad died.”

  “That’s a real nice family story, but where’s the letter?”

  “Tell Randy to take her to my brother’s place, and I’ll give you what you want.”

  Eddie stood. “Boys, looks like we have a communication problem. What was it that guy said in Cool Hand Luke? A failure to communicate?”

  They laughed as Eddie moved to the fire and pulled something out of it. At first it looked like a stick, but when he got closer, I recognized the metal rod I used to set the concrete. The end glowed red, and the other guys whooped and hollered when they saw it.

  “I’ve tried to tell you I mean what I say. Maybe this will convince you.” Eddie stuck the metal rod to my neck and flesh sizzled.

  I finally knew a little of what Elvis had gone through. The smell of the burned skin was nauseating, and he held it there a good ten seconds before he pulled away, taking a section of my neck with it.

  “That’s a mighty good brand, Eddie,” Elmer said.

  I slumped over and nearly passed out, the pain unbearable. But I managed to hang on to the blade as I fought. My hands were getting numb as I worked the blade back and forth on the plastic, and I’d cut the meaty flesh of my palms several times. Maybe I’d bleed to death before these guys could toss me in the river. But as the searing heat pressed against my neck and my arms tensed, I felt something move, something crackle, and I shoved the blade with all my might through the plastic—like a man biting a silver bullet.

  “Now I’ll give you one more chance,” Eddie said, leaning close to me. “Where’s that will?”

  “I don’t need it,” I said, writhing, shaking my head. It must have looked like a reaction to the pain, but it was actually a cover for freeing my hands. I saw the ceiling of the church, the cloakroom of my fourth-grade classroom—a way out. “The old tree. I almost shot my foot off down there. A big hole in the trunk.”

  “That’s where he stashed it?” Eddie stood. “That’s how you’ve been paying for the construction. I knew it! Which tree you talking about?”

  I threw my head back. “Past that pine grove—go to the fence and follow it about a hundred yards. At the end of the fence, where it turns and runs down the hill, you’ll see it. It’s in the shape of an L.”

  “I noticed it when we came by,” Wes said.

  “Grab a flashlight,” Eddie said. He looked at Elmer. “Stay with him.”

  The car door slammed and the two men hurried into the night, the beam of the flashlight flitting on the landscape of my youth.

  Fudd rubbed his hands together and laughed. “We’re gonna be set now.”

  “Where’d you guys come up with all that cash, anyway?” I said, struggling at the last edge of the plastic.

  “Had it all worked out till that lunkhead got involved.”

  “Elvis?”

  “Yeah. Eddie didn’t even know he was the one who took it until . . . Aw, why am I telling you this? Just sit back and shut up or I’ll give you another brand.”

  I chuckled.

  “What are you laughing at?”

  “You really think Eddie’s gonna let you have any of that money?” I said. “You’re crazy.”

  “We got us a deal—gonna split it even.”

  I laughed. “You don’t see it, do you?”

  “Just shut up.”

  “You’re dumb as a stump. You know why he picked Randy and Wes? Because they’re stupid. You watch. We’ll hear a shot and Eddie’ll come back up the hill alone.”

  “I said, shut up!” he yelled, and as he did, he moved to kick me in the face. It was a move I had seen a thousand times at Clarkston. Someone gets the upper hand and closes in for t
he killing blow, a kick that snaps the head back and renders the victim unconscious.

  But I had worked through the plastic and felt freedom’s snap. I kept my hands behind me until I saw my chance. With the kick coming at my head, I caught his foot in both hands and twisted it, the knee cartilage stretching and snapping like a watermelon rind.

  His face, shocked and unbelieving at first, now screwed up in pain as he focused energy on his leg. Unable to cry out or suck in breath, he went down hard on his back. By the time he reached for his gun, it was too late. I gave him a swift blow to the temple with it, and his body relaxed against the side of the house.

  I spotted the flashlight beam that was now in the midst of the trees. I didn’t have much time before they found the tree and climbed up to see there was nothing in that hole. I checked the car for keys, but they weren’t in the ignition or over the visor.

  I checked Elmer again. He had a pulse, but his head was lolled back, his mouth open, totally gone. I found his keys but his car was too far back in the woods, so I jammed the gun in my belt and ran.

  There is a feeling of weightlessness running down a hill, like a child windmilling his arms as he heads into the unknown. My neck burned and my wrists ached from the biting of the plastic cuffs and the slicing of the razor, and the back of my head was on fire, but I was free and the feeling was even better than my release from Clarkston. My Sunday school teacher would have been horrified had she known I had lied my way to freedom, but I have come to believe there are some things you simply can’t explain to Sunday school teachers.

  I glanced back but couldn’t see the flashlight in the woods. I figured I had at least five minutes. Instead of running for the driveway, I ran through the trees, leaning on my knowledge of the hill, the dips and swells, the rotted and decaying trees and the healthy ones. I hit my share of saplings, stinging me in the face as I rushed by, and tripped over a couple of rocks and went down hard, but I managed to regain my balance and keep going.

  The house sits at the bottom of the hill in a small valley surrounded by a creek that cuts its way lazily through a meadow. I could see only the end of the house as I came out of the clearing, crossed the driveway I had built, and peered into the inky darkness. No lights on inside. I slowed to catch my breath, scanning the yard and driveway for a vehicle.