The Sweet Taste (Perry County)

by Roy F. Chandler

  Chris was snatched from my care and made much of. Old Dave, the cook who beat the pans and came for me during the bear mauling, told in lurid detail his version of the incident. A skilled storyteller, the cook turned the few confused and panicky moments into a battle royal that seemed to last an hour.

  The boy loved it all. He rode the track vehicles through the moose meadows and rode the horses into sheep country. Under Dave's direction he shot a few ptarmigan, tore their breasts loose in the approved manner, and ate them for supper.

  I did not need two weeks to accomplish the few tasks I had in Alaska. I dropped myself from the unemployment rolls and had my huge bank account transferred to Duncannon, Pa.

  Telling Red Harston was the only hard part.

  "I'm dropping out this year, Red. Hope it doesn't leave you short."

  Harston nodded, not at all dismayed. "There's no problem, Gene. I've had Dave's boy scouting up bear and things look right."

  He paused as though weighing his words. "I expect that boy's got a handsome-looking mother without a husband standing by."

  My face heated up. What the hell was I flustered about anyway?

  "Well, that's right. Red, but I haven't made any real moves in that direction or anything like that."

  Harston was amused. "You put a lot of 'thats' in your last sentence, Gene. Moves? Hah! I've never known a man with fewer or poorer moves than Gene Perry. That gal will have to wrestle you down and likely hog tie you to get anywhere."

  "Oh, come on, Red."

  Harston ruminated a moment. "Likely, you'll blunder along thinking a lot but doing little, until something desperate builds a fire under you, or until someone else picks her off while you're daydreaming away.

  "Around women you're slow, Perry. I ought to have had Dave teach you a few things. He's outlived two wives and is divorcing number three."

  "When I marry, it'll be to the right girl and for life, Red."

  "If you marry, Gene. Next spring I'll likely see you crawling out of some ratty old bush plane, wearing that huge pistol, and begging for something to do around camp."

  "Maybe, maybe not." My puny answer left me dissatisfied, but it was all I had right then.

  Chris and I went to see bears. I took him to a popular feeding spot. It was a protected area, but we weren't in Alaska for shooting.

  For our last adventure, we drove up to Denali Park and rode the shuttle bus the ninety or so miles in to Wonder Lake. We slept at the lodge and came out. The trip was worthwhile. Mount McKinley peeked from her clouds for a long instant, and we got close to Dall Sheep.

  Our flight home was again at night. I slept better. Maybe the few decisions I had made helped out.

  I had things to weigh, though. Was I really saying good-by to the roving life? I didn't have a strong certainty. I hadn't gotten real close to Lori. Why not?

  God, I was as bad as Red Harston claimed.

  If Lori would have me, we could open the antique shop she was set on. I could fix up the cabin—Lori liked it out there in Watts Township. Except for Spider Seeber rattling around just over the ridge, it was a good area.

  +++

  Thinking about Spider turned my thoughts. A pair of peculiar things had happened concerning Spider Seeber. The first was typical of him. The second . . . well, coincidences made me edgy.

  The "spiderism" occurred on a Sunday. I caught a glimpse of Seeber slipping through the woods above my cabin. I was passing a window and movement flicked across the view. Deer, I thought, and looked closer. There was old Spider, just hunkering down, well into the woods where he shouldn't have been seen.

  I had to grin inside; maybe we were somewhat alike. I had crossed the ridge to watch him dig his garbage hole; now here he was spying out what I was doing.

  I went outside and puttered around, but he stayed out of sight. When I went in, and looked out the window, he was still there, motionless as a stone. Seeing what? His interest escaped me. He was still watching when it got too dark to see.

  Of course, Spider's spying made me curious. If Seeber was worried about me, maybe he had something to hide. That was when I decided on another look and got a real giggle out of my neighbor's carrying on.

  Spider worked, so I waited until a weekday before taking the grown-over trail to have a safe look at his place.

  Near the top I almost stepped on a large patch of sand. It covered the path and extended for four feet or so. It hadn't been there on my previous visit. I could see where a raccoon had left his paw prints on the smooth surface. I figured Spider had hauled the sand clear up the ridge so I would leave tracks, just like the coon had. Devious was old Spider.

  I started around the sand and then held up to think it over. Spider Seeber was more than devious—he was extremely devious. I tried to think like the Seeber I had grown up with and began looking around.

  Sure enough, my good neighbor had also strung a few trip threads. About ankle high, they spread to either side, where avoiding the sand would walk you right through them. I had already broken one without feeling a thing.

  Seeber could come up and see if anyone—like me in particular—had crossed over to peer into his hollow. Sneaky, that Spider.

  I repaired the broken string by shortening it a little and made a wide detour through the brush.

  Spider's place lay as it had before. The hole was empty, the backhoe gone. It looked like a typical Seeber operation, half done, never to be completed.

  Maybe I should go down and fumble through Spider's dirty laundry. Hell, maybe he had already done that at my place. If I detected that kind of prowling it would be time to take Seeber to task—seriously.

  Years before, back when Spider and I were boys and tried to be friends, old Grampa Seeber had showed me his secret hiding place.

  A piece of dining room wainscoting could be raised an inch or so. The board could then be removed revealing a shelved cavity between the wall studs. Grampa had a nickel plated revolver, a can of old pennies, and a pair of silver dollars in there.

  I wondered if Spider used the same stash. It could even be that he didn't know about it. Grampa Seeber hadn't liked Spider very well.

  Nuts to all of it. Spider Seeber's antics never had interested me much. If I again caught him lurking, I would lay into him. Otherwise I'd try to forget my paranoid neighbor.

  The second and sort of nettlesome Spider Seeber incident occurred just after Jello Gorse got his new Harley. Jello drove up Route 22 to the Midway exit, crossed under and came back down the river. I dogged along after him until he pulled off and bumped down a rough path that fishermen kept open to the river. I pulled over and waited. The trail dead ended, and Jello would have to come back out.

  He was gone so long I was considering walking up to see what he was doing. Fishing? Not Jello Gorse.

  Just as suddenly as he had gone in, Jello's Harley boiled into sight and, without pause, resumed its rider's stately pace down river.

  Intrigued, I guessed I would have to go down and take a look at what had occupied Jello's time. Before I could engage my gears a familiar pickup lurched from the fishing road. I was parked well up the highway, but even at a distance. Spider Seeber's lanky shape was distinctive.

  Just like that, the plot had thickened. Jello and Spider? I had now seen them together twice. Did a pair of meetings indicate scheming? Could it involve me? With these two it might.

  I drove down to the fishing point. I stayed there speculating, but nothing surfaced.

  Guys like Gorse and Seeber could be into anything. Drugs came immediately to mind. I wondered if Spider raised pot. Marijuana growing would account for Spider's jumpiness. He could scatter marijuana plants through his woods and nobody would know. I resolved to make a thorough reconnaissance. It wouldn't be above a louse like Spider to grow his plants in my woods. I'd check on that as well.

  I looked. There were a lot of acres to cover, but if Seeber was a grower, I couldn't detect it. His crop wasn't on his land, mine, or on Doyles'. So much for the dope theory.r />
  Since then I looked for Spider's truck everywhere Jello stopped. It never appeared, but a gut instinct kept telling me that the two of them had not just chanced across each other.

  +++

  When a man takes on an uncomfortable responsibility, he likes to talk about it. It's relieving to share the worry. That is why bank robbers and murderers get caught. They share their secret and it gets out.

  Somehow I knew this, so I spoke to no one about my very active participation in the Bikers' Club fire. The only person I would dare share the knowledge with was Lori Shoop. But to ease my own emotions by burdening her would be unfair.

  The bike burning had dominated the Harrisburg papers for one issue. The popular consensus was that some unnamed rival gang had done the deed. When the subject came up in my presence, I nodded agreement.

  Lori had suggested that I should be pleased. I avoided commitment by retorting that Jello was the one I wanted.

  With some sort of youthful insight, Chris had asked, "Did you burn 'em out, Gene?"

  After I got my eyeballs resettled and my throat reopened, I answered, "Holy smoke, Chris, I thought you did it."

  We laughed together and that ended it.

  +++

  Chapter 6 - JELLO

  Gorse's father, who had walked away during his son's boyhood, had first called him Jello because of the boy's roly-poly shape. The nickname stuck, and by the time he could have shed the nickname the insult had worn out, and Gorse preferred Jello to Harvey—his real name. Jello Gorse liked to hurt people. He had discovered the pleasure when he was an over-sized, fat, pre-teen child. Jello's predaciousness had no roots in a difficult childhood or ridicule by other children. Jello Gorse simply discovered that his natural size and strength allowed him to inflict injury. Causing pain made him feel strong and superior, in control, a person to be feared.

  As a young boy, Gorse did a lot of arm twisting and pushing and shoving. When he grew old enough to fight, Jello knocked others down, administered bloody noses, and gave black eyes.

  Huge for his age, Jello never lost—until a stranger visited the neighborhood. The visitor was a head shorter than Gorse but powerfully developed.

  As usual, Jello instigated the fight. The stranger beat the tar out of his antagonizer. His strength made Jello's appear puny. He twisted Gorse into a knot, then slapped him around as he willed.

  When he finally released Jello, the stranger flung the larger youth aside almost contemptuously and said, "You're big but you're just fat, Gorse. Get smart and don't mess with a weightlifter. Next time, I'll just break a few things, so don't try me again."

  Humiliated, Jello Gorse fled. For days he took his mortification out on locals he could be sure of, but inside, uncertainties chewed at his liver.

  Reading was not a Gorse interest, but Jello bought a number of muscle magazines and absorbed their message—that a man could get about as strong as he wished. The more you worked, the mighty men claimed, the more powerful you became.

  Jello Gorse bought the biggest weight set York Barbell offered and began lifting.

  Once he got into it, Gorse enjoyed the strain of weightlifting almost as much as he did beating on people. If his socializing had been limited before, weights narrowed Jello's horizons even more. Gorse lifted all the time. He ate curling a dumbbell in his free hand and grabbed his barbell every time he passed it.

  A magnificently proportioned physique did not draw Jello Gorse. The young giant's interest lay solely in power. He lifted to get strong, then even stronger.

  How far an individual can go in developing his muscular strength is controlled, in part, by his genes.

  Gorse was blessed with bones fit for a moose, and meat packed on his thick skeleton as it did on a bull buffalo.

  When he quit school at sixteen, Jello Gorse went two hundred and twenty pounds and stood almost six feet three inches. He was a block of bone, muscle, and sinew that made the football coaches beg, but Gorse never considered trying a sport. His attention had centered upon the most beautiful creation he could imagine.

  Gorse recognized somewhere deep in his soul that Harley-Davidson built the machine that turned men into kings.

  Jello Gorse quit school and went into the steel mill. The United Steel Workers of America insured good money for mill workers. Gorse was too young for union membership, but his pay was the same. That was all Jello desired. He lived small, saved hard and paid cash for his motorcycle.

  At the steel plant, Jello made no friends. He chose heavy physical labor and sank into it with a grim satisfaction that estranged fellow workers.

  Where most merely went through the motions doing no more work than was required to hold their jobs, Gorse liked to sweat. He obviously enjoyed straining at brutal tasks. His strength grew prodigious, his attitude increasingly sour.

  Sullen, quick to take offense, eager to fight, Jello Gorse was judged more than a little crazy, one to give wide berth. Gorse put his challengers in hospitals. One victim never worked again. Foremen avoided confronting the monster of the shipping dock. Men, who believed they were tough and bad hombres, chose other targets.

  Jello Gorse joined the Pagans. A motorcycle club of national prominence, the Pagans vied with the west coast's Hell's Angels for bad image honors. Gorse liked the club. Members fought, drank, did dope, stole, and ran drugs.

  Their women transferred buddy seat to buddy seat as their sweaty hungers urged. Because many of the club's slatterns wanted the meanest and roughest, Jello got his share.

  Unfortunately, Pagans did not migrate in numbers to the capital area, and Gorse sought closer companionship.

  A more local club, The Sons of Satan, proved too tame, and no other group welcomed him. In his twenties, Jello Gorse settled into the company of ne'er-do-wells and outcasts that fit nowhere. Together they bought the old service station in Perry County and started their own bikers' club.

  With the new highways, the club was only twenty or so minutes from Gorse's home or work. It was just far enough to keep people from either end knowing much about what he did when absent.

  +++

  By Gorse's measure, the years with the Bikers' Club had been good. Members came and went, but a hard core of a half dozen or so remained. As charter members, they took liberties with others' booze and women.

  Fights were common at the club and occasionally knives flashed. When it got that mean, Jello Gorse usually quieted the combatants. No one argued with Jello—at least not a second time.

  Until the bikes burned, there had been only one bad scene at the clubhouse. Jello had handled that because he was involved. Only one other rider even knew about it, and the incident remained buried, almost forgotten.

  The bike burning was another matter. No one knew where to turn. None of the burned out riders could even point an accusatory finger.

  Who? Gorse pumped iron and waited. Guys claimed that what went around, came around. Someday, a whisper would float through, or, just as likely, some stranger would say, "Hey, were you one of those guys so and so burned up?" Then Jello would pounce, and whoever it was . . . Gorse liked thinking about that part.

  Jello's Harley was partially insured. Motorcycle insurance was expensive and inconvenient to find. Gorse expected his policy would be cancelled shortly after he filed his claim.

  The unfairness rankled. Having some crazy torch a line of cycles shouldn't reflect on a policyholder, but it would. Then it would be necessary to go through the demeaning routine of having the state assign an underwriter, who would hate carrying the insurance, and who would cancel it at the first opportunity.

  Jello Gorse fairly ached to break someone's bones. Flying out to the Harley factory in Wisconsin and tooling home along the interstates on a brand new Harley eased only some of his rage.

  Unlike most of his companions, Jello saved money. His wants were small, so he just socked the rest away.

  After the big score, money would be even less of a problem. Probably he could quit work for good, but he would stay on th
e job for a while. His share would be buried deep, where only he could find it. He would spend a little, out west probably, where no one would know him.

  Jello laughed a little to himself whenever he thought about what was coming. He liked letting his glance touch the club members, knowing he wouldn't miss them. He wondered who would replace them, but doubted he would come around after things quieted down.

  It was funny how that other, almost forgotten, bad time at the club tied into the big score coming up. What went around did come around.

  Few Duncannon girls had anything to do with the Bikers' Club. When they did, the scene usually got pretty wild for them. Like it or not, the women got passed around. That was the way it was, and a girl shouldn't be angry when it happened.

  One girl was surprised and fought back. Whether it was Jello or the skinny guy joining in didn't really matter. The local girl put up a battle. Nobody cared, except that after she quieted, they took a good look and saw she was dead.

  Even Jello Gorse was a little stunned. He and the skinny biker had to think it over for a minute or two deciding who else knew and what they could do.

  Jello made the plan. He heaved the girl's body into an old parts bin and the skinny guy dumped her belongings in after her. Nobody else had been in the room during the scuffle. So, only the two of them knew. Jello piled heavy junk on the bin to prevent a chance opening. Then they joined the others drinking and hanging around. They let it be known that the girl had left.

  Before long other bikers were in and out of the death room without anyone suspecting.

  The two killers stayed to close up the club. Long after the other members were gone, and when the highway traffic was light, they buried the body deep, where no one was likely to dig.

  When the hole was dug and the body dumped in, Jello considered rapping his accomplice's head with a shovel and dumping his dead carcass in as well. That way only he would know. He wondered if the skinny guy was having similar thoughts. In protecting his own head, Jello waited too long and the burying was done. They disguised their digging and sat down to talk it out.