Greasy Bend

by Kris Lackey

  At the bottom of her next dive, her numbing hands found a rock bottom swept clean by the current. Her noodling days now stood her in good stead as she found clefts and knobs by which to pull herself upstream and bank to bank. The difference was, now the rocks felt alien and distant, as if her hands were floating free of her body. Her grip was stiff and mechanical.

  Rock gave way to less cluttered mud. Bond surfaced and dived. She could no longer knead the mud, only poke it.

  Her eyes were shut, so she floated in darkness. She was suddenly aware of another darkness, this one invisible.

  CHAPTER 32

  Maytubby went back to Jill’s bedroom to get his clothes. She breathed deeply under layers of blankets. The garage apartment was cold, though its floor furnace roared.

  Light from sodium streetlamps fell through the living room blinds. Maytubby pulled on his civvies and buckled his duty belt. The room smelled like burnt pecans. Jill muted her phone at night, so he texted her: “Hannah diving for gun at Greasy Bend. Bringing her hot coffee. Yeah, she’ll spit nails. Also I stole your couch blanket.” The coffee part was a lie.

  Maytubby took his magnetic portable cop strobe from the Ford’s glove box and slapped it on top of the cab. He wouldn’t turn it on until he was out of Ada.

  * * *

  The deer rut was two months past; bars had closed hours ago; the road was deserted. Maytubby pushed the big eight. Tommy Hewitt’s death had put an end to his rule about never speeding.

  Maytubby pictured Hannah in the cold river. What did Emily Dickinson say about freezing persons? First the chill, then the stupor, then the letting go. Hannah would be the last person to let go, but she was human.

  With the blue strobe shuttering on the scrub oaks flying past, Maytubby watched for a constable at every crossroads hamlet. If there was one sitting in a dark car, he gave the old Ford a pass.

  CHAPTER 33

  Rage and hunter’s finger—the brief return of sensation and flexibility to chilled digits—did not buy Bond any more time in the water, but for ten seconds she ripped up Washita silt like a wild hog. She was setting her hands on the bottom to spring herself toward air when her right hand struck metal.

  She burst to the surface and inhaled loudly. When she opened her eyes, she had a drunk’s tunnel vision. She shut them and lashed the surface to defeat the current, sucked air, and dived again. The bottom was all the same here. She dug in the mud to keep from floating down. She needed air. She needed heat. Five seconds, ten. She breached again, crouped in air, and went down. This time, her fingers stiffening again, she found the steel, pinned it between her hands, and thrashed to the surface.

  She rolled onto her back and kicked toward the bank. Her limbs and torso felt leaden. An owl glided low over the water, its moon silhouette edged in silver. She flung the pistol onto the bank.

  When her back struck roots and sand, Bond scissored her legs and pivoted out of the water. She began to shiver violently, her teeth clattering. When she tried to stand, her knees buckled. She panted and spasmed, her cheek pressed into the sand. Her blankets were very near, but cold had driven all else from her mind. Her body curled of its own accord, and she pressed her forearms against her shins. She rocked herself.

  The meager heat within her finally allowed her to open her limbs, get on her hands and knees, and summon an image of herself on the riverbank. Lifting and planting each knee and hand, she managed a wobbly crawl. When she reached the brambles, she was too weak to push them back. They raked her face until she broke into the little clearing she had made.

  Here she dropped onto the flat part of her blanket stack and rolled so the hanging part fell over her, from her head to her feet. She rolled more and again let her body curl. But now she had insulation. Before warmth could reach her, Bond felt the cold blood in her limbs flooding into her core. She endured one last long surge of tremors.

  Then she could hear again, even through the blankets. Small animals rustling in the brush, a bobtail downshifting on Oklahoma 1. Not long after that, as she warmed her hands in her groin, she began to feel them. They were sticky. She couldn’t leave the blankets yet.

  Bond heard the mumble of an engine, faintly at first, then distinctly. She shook her head in the blankets, steeled herself against Maytubby’s aid.

  The engine sounded close enough to be at Greasy Bend Bridge. Then it fell silent. Maytubby had likely driven the last half mile by moonlight. And he wouldn’t slam his pickup door. She doubted he would call her name. She listened in darkness, gently flexing her limbs and breathing more slowly.

  After a few minutes, she heard the twig-snap of footfalls—slow, halting. The sounds grew fainter and then disappeared. Minutes later, they resumed, this time growing louder. Soon, she could hear brambles scraping cloth. When the steps were very near, Bond said, into the blankets, “Bill.”

  Silence.

  She heard a cell phone click and saw, through all the blankets, the glow of the phone’s light. It brightened and dimmed, brightened again.

  “Shit,” she heard a man say. “He wasn’t lying.” His feet shuffled a little. Then he said, much louder, “What is this?”

  She heard the rasp of a lighter and then smelled cigarette smoke.

  The footsteps came closer, behind her, and then stopped. The kick hit her sacrum. She didn’t expect the blow, which whipped her spine. She didn’t groan or move.

  “What the fuck you doing in that river?” he shouted. Not Richard James, not Roger Teague.

  The footsteps circled her slowly. The cell light brightened and dimmed. The circle widened. She heard a branch snap and then sounds of flogged brush. Down her spine, a blade of pain swept the numbness away.

  The flogging stopped, and the footsteps again approached. She sensed a body close to her, then felt herself rolling away from it, her warmth thinning as she spun until she lay on the leaves, blinded by the cell’s flashlight. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said. The cold embraced her once again, and she began to shiver.

  The light played over her and the blankets. “I said, bitch, what were you doing down there?”

  Bond stared hard at a spot just above the light, tried to grit her chattering teeth. “N-n-n-n-noodling, you pissant.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Maytubby cut his headlights as soon as he turned onto Greasy Bend Road. Hannah wouldn’t need any advertisement. Even before the bridge trusses appeared a few hundred yards from the river, he saw a light-colored pickup parked beside the approach. He didn’t see Hannah’s Buick. He parked, pulled on his camo hat, draped Jill’s blanket over his neck, and began walking fast toward the bridge.

  In the woods upriver from the bridge, a small bright light appeared, darting around before it disappeared. When it reappeared, this time unmoving, he heard a man shout something. Maytubby broke into a run.

  The pickup, an ’85 Chevy resembling one in the Sentinel lot, faced him, so he couldn’t flick on the Maglite and get its tag when he passed it. At the edge of the approach clearing, the bosk was jagged shadow. The light was deep in there, and he was going to make a lot of noise getting to it.

  Maytubby stopped to pull off his runners and socks, which he left there. He followed the edge of the thicket to the riverbank, slid down a few feet to a thin beach, and turned upriver. The sand was cold. A few roots the moonlight didn’t reveal broke his jogging stride, but the low susurrus of the Washita masked the sound.

  The man’s “Fuck!” stopped Maytubby in his tracks and echoed from a taller stone bank upstream. Looking down, he saw where someone had come out of the river. As he turned to follow the track, he saw the moon reflected dully by a hatchet blade, and a headlamp. And then by a pistol. He didn’t pause to pull the pistol from the sand. If Fuck Man hadn’t found it, he likely wouldn’t.

  Maytubby could see the cell light clearly. It was aimed toward the ground. He stopped, drew his service Beretta with this right hand,
and took the unlit Maglite in his left. He raised the pistol and the light together, his thumbs touching. He crept toward a tiny clearing. The phone light moved away from Maytubby. He seized the chance, walked quickly into the clearing, aimed the pistol at a dark figure, and flicked on the Mag. “Police!” he shouted. The man whirled and grimaced at the LED glare. This time, Maytubby saw the crooked, stained incisors of Duncan Calls. “Drop that phone!”

  Calls dropped his cigarette and bolted from the clearing the way he had come. Maytubby raised his pistol above his head and lowered the flashlight toward Hannah Bond, who was again rolling herself in blankets, this time leaving her head out. He holstered his pistol, knelt beside her face, and leaned over. “You know how this is done,” he said.

  Bond opened her mouth and inhaled the warm lung air he blew into it. He smelled onions and Calls’ cigarette. A vehicle engine came to life; its sound moved away from them. A few seconds later, there was the distant sound of breaking glass.

  Soon, Bond’s tremors stopped. Maytubby found her long underwear and clothes, laid them beside the blankets. She breathed slowly a few times, then barked, “Quick!”

  Maytubby chose the underwear bottoms, dropped his flashlight, and stretched open the waistband. Bond rolled until she lay on the ends of the blankets, shucked off her wet bra and panties, and lifted her legs. She winced as she pulled the bottoms up. “That whoredog kicked me in the back.” Maytubby grabbed the top and bunched open its hem and neckline while he took a step on his knees. He yanked the neckline down over her matted hair, and she got her hands through the armholes and pulled the hem over her breasts.

  Maytubby scrambled to get her civvies, socks and boots, coat and aviator hat. When he turned his flashlight back on Bond as he handed her pants, socks, and boots, he said, “You cut your left hand.”

  She reached for the socks and pants. “Didn’t know it until two minutes ago. Nothin’.”

  While she pulled on her socks and pants, Maytubby draped her coat over her shoulders and tugged her aviator hat over her ears.

  “I look like Amelia Earhart?”

  “If her plane had crashed in the Washita River. In winter.”

  “That wasn’t James or Teague or the Volvo guy. Sulak. But you know that.” Bond stood up to finish dressing.

  “His name is Duncan Calls. He killed Tommy Hewitt at the Golden Play.”

  Bond paused in zipping her coat. She looked at Maytubby. “You …” She lowered her head and shook it while she finished zipping. “Well.” She cleared her throat, slid her feet into her boots. After flexing her hands a dozen times, she tied the laces.

  CHAPTER 35

  Jill Milton awoke to the frantic barking of her neighbor’s border collie. The ruby numerals of her bedside clock read 5:42. She sat up in the chilly air and found Maytubby’s message on her phone. His side of the bed smelled faintly of her sandalwood soap; the room, of burned pecans.

  The dog slammed the chain-link fence, which shrieked against its posts. Jill pulled a flannel robe over her jersey pajamas and walked to the living room’s front window. She lifted a blind slat and saw, by the light of a streetlamp, the roof and bed of a light-colored Supercab pickup parked in her drive. Her car was parked in the garage below her.

  Her phone was on the bed. Before she got to the bedroom, she heard a vehicle door open below. Then another. She stopped in the short hallway and opened the closet door. Enough light filtered through the bathroom blinds to show her the barrel of her great-great-grandfather’s 1915 Springfield double-barrel twelve-gauge shotgun. Her grandfather had taught her to shoot thrown bottles with it on the South Canadian. She reached into a box of 2¾-inch birdshot shells on the overhead shelf and dropped two in her robe pocket.

  Pointing the gun at the hall floor, she thumbed the top lever and broke open the breech. The border collie snarled and barked. She took the shells from her pocket, slid them into the barrels, and closed the gun, which she balanced in the crook of her left arm. She retrieved her phone and said into it, “Call Ada police.” As she walked into the living room, the dispatcher answered. Backing toward the wall opposite the front door, she gave the dispatcher the King’s Road address and reported a suspicious person outside her garage apartment.

  Her old wooden steps creaked and snapped. Dropping the phone into her robe pocket, she switched on a table lamp and leveled the shotgun at the front door. She took a step back with her right leg and set it. When the light came on, the snapping had fallen silent for a few seconds. Then it came in a flurry.

  The door burst open. Jill flinched at the splinters but held her stance. She saw the work boot of a thick, bearded man follow the door, in the man’s hairy right hand an automatic pistol raised to balance his kick. In the instant before she shot the leg he stood on, she saw his wide bloodshot eyes. The dim vampiric face above his shoulder was Rooster, the man who had wanted to call her a nigger. As the burly man collapsed, smashing her banjo, Jill raised the shotgun to the height of Rooster’s face. He ducked and spun away. She heard him falling down the stairs.

  An intact string on the banjo rang.

  The heavy man bellowed from the floor but still held the pistol. Jill tilted the shotgun away from her face and struck his wrist with the butt. The pistol fell from his hand, and she kicked it away. She heard the roar of the pickup engine, the collie barking, and sirens whooping up Broadway toward King’s Road.

  Through the doorway, she could see the pickup—a Ford, now in streetlight—gain King’s Road and accelerate westward. Covering the thick man, the shotgun’s butt in her armpit, she called Dispatch, said she had shot an armed intruder and that he needed an ambulance. She added that an accomplice had fled west on King’s Road in a light-colored Ford Supercab. The first cruisers appeared from the east fifteen seconds after the Rooster left.

  CHAPTER 36

  Maytubby took a paper evidence bag and disposable gloves from his duty belt and collected the filtered butt.

  “Vehicle stopped on the bridge and shined a flashlight down here,” Hannah said. “Whoever it was must have told Calls somebody was in the river. Gimme your light.” Maytubby stowed the evidence bag and handed her the light. She found the pile of leaves over her duty belt and kicked them away.

  “Calls didn’t know you’re a cop.”

  She handed the light back to Maytubby and buckled her belt. “I told him I was noodlin’.”

  “Wily.”

  “Snaggletooth has seen your old Ford. He’ll call his friends, and they’ll start puttin’ two and two together.”

  “The pilot runner in Cache that shot my tailgate …” Maytubby fell silent and stared at the ground. “He had fancy binocs in that plane, and he buzzed my pickup on his way east. If he talked to them …”

  Bond pulled off her aviator’s hat and dried her hair with Jill’s blanket. “Tell Jill I’ll wash it and give it to you.” She threw it atop her own blankets, glanced at his feet. “No shoes. I thought you didn’t do that Mexican-running-Indian shit in the winter.”

  “Only when stealth demands.”

  Bond sighed as she replaced her hat.

  “You found James’ gun, Hannah.”

  “I found a gun, Sergeant. Let’s not jump it.”

  “C’mon, let’s get it bagged.”

  “You go put on your sneakers while I dig out some fresh gloves and get my headlamp.”

  “I’ll bring the Ford to the bridge.” Maytubby followed Calls’ path back to his shoes. When he had them on, he ran down the dirt road toward his truck. Ragged clouds sped across the moon, and a rising wind moaned in the treetops.

  In the beam of Maytubby’s flashlight, broken glass glittered on the road beside the F-100. There was glass on the bench seat, too. He opened the cab door and shone his light on the headliner. The twenty-gauge pump was still in its rack. He swept the glass from the seat with the Maglite, got in, and drove to the bridge approach. He
instinctively parked crosswise to his path back to Hannah. He pulled the twenty-gauge from its rack, then tilted the back of the bench seat forward and pulled out a half-empty box of birdshot shells. He took five and put the box back. As he walked toward Bond, he pushed shells into the magazine tube.

  When he found her on the riverbank, she was squatting in the sand, her headlamp illuminating the pistol. She had a plastic evidence bag in her left hand, and a straight foot-long branch in the other. She lifted her head and blinded Maytubby for an instant before she looked down again and slid the branch into the pistol’s trigger guard. Maytubby carefully laid the shotgun on the sand.

  “Sorry. Man, a box would be a lot better than this derned bag.” She handed Maytubby the bag.

  “I’ll call Scrooby.”

  “You do that,” Bond said. She lifted the pistol, and lowered it into the bag. Maytubby sealed the bag.

  “Fairly new Smith and Wesson M-and-P,” he said. “No magazine, slide locked back, no shell in the chamber.”

  “Shoots a nine-millimeter Luger—same as the casing I found wedged up on the bridge.”

  “The nine ammo I found in the Cache plane was not Luger. Auto. No taper.”

  Maytubby held out the bag. Bond took it and inspected the pistol with her light. “Right,” she said, walking a few paces toward the river, laying the bag on the ground, and piling leaves and brush over it. She jabbed a long limb into the ground to mark the spot. “Where’d you get that pump?”

  “Roof rack in my pickup.”

  “Whoever saw me in the river scairt you?”

  “Abundance of caution.”

  “Where’d you learn to talk like that? Shit, never mind. You saw the hatchet, too?”