Hog Wild

by Cathy Pickens

  So I suppose she did me a favor, and I’ve decided not to send a letter to the police. However, I wanted someone to know.

  Don’t hold it against her. Just do be careful of her cooking. Remember, by now, she’s an accomplished poisoner.

  Farewell to you, Mack.

  Harden Avinger

  I looked up from the letter to find Mr. Mack studying me intently, watching for something in my expression. Shock? Confirmation? Something.

  I struggled to keep my face straight. I couldn’t let slip that Harden Avinger had opted to proclaim his murder with an eight-foot angel rather than a letter to the police. Had he been crazy? Prophetic? Or just mean?

  “You can see why that banana pudding recipe I left with your mother set me back on my heels,” Mr. Mack said. “Harden used to make rude cracks about her cooking, about everything she did. Always put-downs. Maggy Avinger wouldn’t hurt a fly, but forgive me for saying it, Harden Avinger could kill a nest of angry hornets with a sideways glance.”

  “When did Harden’s lawyer send this?”

  “I got it a couple of days ago—Thursday? No, Friday.”

  Harden had kept Carlton Barner busy last week mailing letters, to Innis Barker and Mr. Mack. Were there others?

  “You mind if I take this with me?”

  “Take it. Nasty thing makes me sick. It’s like something slimy slithered through the mail slot”

  I paused, choosing words. “I’m sure you know this already, but Maggy Avinger could use a friend right now.” I couldn’t say more than that. But Harden’s darkness seemed to circle her. To say I feared for her sounded melodramatic, but I didn’t know how else to explain the nagging sense of dread.

  “We-ell.” A sweet, light voice trilled behind me, startling us both. “If it isn’t little Avery Andrews, back to practice law, I hear. My, my.”

  I recognized the woman from church but couldn’t put a name to her. She minced toward us clutching a foil-wrapped dish. I didn’t risk a look at Mr. Mack, but he too probably hoped it wasn’t banana pudding.

  Her navy wool skirt had the tautness achieved only by an industrial-strength girdle, and her feet spilled over the tops of her low-heeled pumps.

  “Henry.” She purred. “I was fixing apple cinnamon bread for the women’s club tomorrow and just made up some extra while I was at it. This is still warm, so you’ll want to have some with your lunch.” Her voice supplied all the butter needed.

  “Why, thank you, Estelle. Still warm, you say.” Hypnotized by the scent of cinnamon, his eyes were only for the foil-wrapped package.

  I backed down the sidewalk a couple of steps. “I’ll see you all later.”

  Estelle stepped closer to Mack with a beaming smile and a decidedly proprietary air.

  After church, Mom and Dad sometimes try to beat the crowd to Maylene’s for lunch. Futile, since the Presbyterians always get out that little tick before the Baptists—more responsive readings but shorter sermons.

  This Sunday, some unchurched people must have eaten early and left Mom and Dad a table because they were already seated by the time I got there. They exchanged nodded greetings with a few others in the restaurant. Dacus isn’t small enough that you know everybody, but you do recognize lots of familiar faces—and you expect to run into somebody you know just about anywhere you go.

  The last ten years has brought in a lot of retirees, some to the lakeside resorts, some spilling down from Highlands, where average home prices rival San Francisco’s. A few couples looked like retiree imports. Of those, one group was dressed for church, two others for golf or an afternoon of antique shopping. But most of the folks, even those I didn’t recognize, looked like natives. Conservative dress, conventional haircuts, no overly bleached teeth or surprise-eye face-lifts. The women who spent time with their makeup and hair stood out from those with some lip-stick and wash-and-wear hair, but those with dye jobs and eye makeup were still much more subdued and natural-looking than a similar gathering in Atlanta or Charlotte or even Greenville would offer.

  For the couple who pushed around the crowd at the door, that lack of subtlety was one of the things that made them stand out. Her hair was too platinum, her boobs too large to occur naturally with those boyish hips, her lipstick and eye shadow too dark and over-done. He looked more conservative in his blue blazer and open-collar shirt—and more pushy, rocking up on his toes as if he were trying to spot the maitre d’ so he could slip him a twenty for a good table. Clearly a newcomer who didn’t understand the wait-patiently-in-line protocol of Maylene’s.

  Staring is an accepted form of public entertainment in Dacus, much as street musicians and artists entertain spontaneous crowds in large cities. When I first came back to Dacus, having a whole restaurant full of people turn to watch me when I walked in the door unnerved me. It took a while for primitive memory to return, to recall the motivation: Check to see if you know them; if not, where are they from and what might they be doing here?

  “Who’s that?” I asked Mom and Dad, nodding toward the crowd at the door.

  Neither had to ask who I was talking about. Dad just shrugged, out of the rumor loop, as usual.

  Mom said, “Lionel Shoal and his wife. Valerie, I think.”

  “The Golden Cove guy?” I leaned closer so I could keep my voice low.

  Mom nodded.

  Lionel Shoal looked like he’d be more at home in Las Vegas than negotiating a land conservancy or running a Sierra Club meeting. He picked his way through the tables to accost a waitress when his attempts to catch her eye from the door failed. She pointed him back to the doorway, and he rejoined the crowd, none too happy, judging from his frown.

  I changed the subject. “So, Dad, why didn’t you tell me you’d hired a new reporter?”

  Mom cut her eyes at him, but didn’t say anything.

  He looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh, him. Boy with the wild hair. Walter hired him.”

  Walter Vann was the Clarion’s editor, the guy who really put out the paper three times a week and, at the same time, managed the piece-rate print jobs for restaurant menus and sale flyers that paid the bills for the whole operation.

  “Seems to be pretty good. Knows how to roll up his sleeves and get busy. You met him?” Dad asked with only casual curiosity as he focused his attention on his fried okra.

  “Yeah, I did. He was telling me all about Vail.”

  “Vail, huh? That where he’s from? Could’ve sworn Walter said he was from Phoenix. Tucson. Somewhere dry. Out west.”

  “How’d Walter lure him to Dacus?”

  Dad shrugged. “Reckon he wanted a job.”

  “Noah seems very experienced, um—” I stumbled, not putting into words that Dacus’s paper wasn’t exactly an incubator for Pulitzer Prize winners.

  “Guess he wanted to get out of the city, to something simpler.”

  That would make sense to Dad. He had, after all, moved to Dacus himself. I wasn’t quite convinced that it made sense for Noah. Noah Lakefield would bear more study.

  “You coming to the plant rescue today?” I asked Mom. At the last minute, she’d had to fill both the morning and afternoon shifts at the First Fruits Food Bank yesterday, so she hadn’t made it up the mountain.

  She nodded. “You want to ride together?”

  Most of the same faces returned to the dig, but I didn’t spot Noah or his amphibimobile. I hadn’t talked to Maggy Avinger since she’d marched off the day before looking for Lisa Livson and some explanation of Shoal’s bulldozers. Taking Maggy’s place, a no-nonsense woman with a clipboard deployed Mom to work with me and Jesse Ruffin. This endeavor was a bigger operation than I’d realized, with lots of worker bees.

  We carried our plant wrap and tools to a new area and a new set of little orange marker flags. Yesterday’s rain made the digging both easier and messier. Even before we’d bent to our task, Mom had Jesse talking, about school, her mom, where her mom worked, how glad she was her dad ran off but how scared her mom was that she might not be able to
support the two of them and at the same time how scared she was that her dad might come back. A torrent of words. Even—shyly—about her boyfriend.

  “Aren’t you young to be settling on a boyfriend?” My mom fights the local tendency to marry too young by nipping the first tender buds of romance before they spread like kudzu. “There’s a wide wonderful world out there you need to explore first. A boyfriend will just slow you down.”

  I know Mom wanted to say hold you back or strangle your dreams completely, but the day was young. She’d just met Jesse. She still had time to work around to that message.

  Jesse looked startled but said nothing. A new concept for her. No boyfriend? Probably from a family where adults started asking five-year-olds, Who’s your boyfriend?

  “Sorry I’m late.” Noah loped up the hillside, his unruly curls jammed under a knit toboggan, his borrowed trowel and a brand-new pair of gloves in hand.

  My mother’s eyes lit up when I introduced the two of them. She studied the newspaper’s employee, intrigued with the new reporter. So I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know about the new hire.

  “Breaking story?” I asked.

  His withering gaze surprised me. I was just trying to make small talk.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said.

  “Sure we do,” Mom said, her voice chipper. She was bent over the black cohosh plants in front of her, so she didn’t see Noah’s expression.

  He was too polite not to respond to her. “A pig sighting.”

  “Pig?” Mom said, not even looking up from her digging.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The look he shot me said, I’m dying of embarrassment here. “A runaway potbellied pig. The Sheriff’s Department and the city police are both on alert. Somebody spotted the pig in the field beside the elementary school this morning, but it disappeared into the woods.” He finished his news recap with an attitude of finality.

  “I heard about that. One of those cute little pet pigs?” Mom said. “I’m sure the owners are frantic.”

  “It’s no cute little pet pig.” The frustration was obvious in his voice. “It stands thigh-high and weighs a hundred and fifty pounds. Apparently some family got tired of their cute little pig when it started weighing more than all the children combined, and they threw it out.” He acted as though he ought to be covering bigger stories. Didn’t he realize this was the big story?

  “Oh, dear,” Mom said. “I had no idea they got that size. Surely it can’t live on its own.”

  “It’s pretty well suited to outrunning sheriff’s deputies.” I didn’t add and newspaper reporters. Noah was new in town, and Mom would fuss at me for being mean.

  “Pigs are such smart animals. I can’t believe somebody would do that,” Mom said. “Of course, people with children throw them away after they tire of the novelty. Folks just don’t think—got to have what they want, whether they’re ready to take care of it or not.”

  Mom didn’t finish her sermonette on the mount. She was distracted by a young man sauntering toward our small group, looking as out of place as a plate of spaghetti on a communion table.

  “Hello there,” Mom stood to greet him, brushing dirt off her knees. “Did they send you to work with us?”

  He slouched inside a scuffed brown leather jacket, and his gaze darted toward my mother, then me. He didn’t smile or take his hands out of his pockets.

  “Naw,” he said, finally. Even with heeled boots, he wasn’t much taller than my mother in her scuffed walking shoes.

  He ignored us and walked over to Jesse. Her face was a confused mix of girlish delight and—was it fear? Something unpleasant.

  “Jesse,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  He grabbed her elbow and led her away without a glance or a word in our direction.

  We couldn’t hear the conversation, though he appeared to do most of the talking. Jesse kept shaking her head, leaning away from him, even taking some tiny backward steps. He looked like he’d be more at home in a bad teen-gang movie than in these woods. His dark, unkempt looks contrasted sharply with Jesse’s fair skin and frail build. Where do girls like Jesse find guys like him? More likely, how do guys like him always spot girls like her?

  Noah went back to digging, oblivious to the tension. Mom made no pretense of digging. She stayed on her feet like a sentry on alert, her trowel held at her side like a weapon at the ready.

  About the time I noticed how intently Mom was watching them, he grabbed Jesse’s arm and shoved his face close to hers. That was Mom’s cue. She flew at him like a banty hen on a stray dog.

  “That’s enough.” Her voice cut sharp with authority. The boy spun around, his arms bowed up at his sides, his fists clenched, his face red.

  “That’s enough. You leave. Now.” Mom barked the words like a drill sergeant and took another step toward him.

  His jaw muscles worked. For an instant, I feared he would hit Mom. But her forcefulness seemed to take the air out of him, his eyes darting around as if he expected attacks from behind the trees.

  He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even glare at my mother. Instead, he spun on his high heel, with a sharp glance back at Jesse, and strode down the road, stumbling once on a tree root.

  Despite her middle-aged ordinariness and her all-weather gardening jacket, my mom can be one scary lady. What she would’ve done had the little jerk come at her, I don’t know. She was probably relying on me for backup. Noah sat on his heels watching it unfold like a TV show, unaware that things had almost gotten ugly.

  “You okay, honey?” Mom tucked Jesse under one arm, trying to calm her uncontrollable shaking. Big tears spilled down Jesse’s cheeks.

  “Let’s go over and get some water. Walk off what’s bottled up inside you.”

  Mom led the slender girl, wobbly on her long fawn legs, away from the direction the punk had taken.

  Boom!

  “What the heck was all that—” Bo-om! Noah’s question was cut off by a loud echo of what sounded like gun blasts.

  I instinctively hunched close to the ground before looking around, all too familiar with the dangers of out-of-season hunting and stray shots. Noah jerked up-right, turning first one direction, then another.

  “What the—”

  Only one other group of diggers was in sight. They, too, stood frozen, looking around in the silence.

  We looked up the road, away from the direction our bad-tempered visitor had gone. An angry voice, the words indistinct, carried from the direction of the gun blasts.

  Self-preservation and curiosity warred inside me for a moment, then I took off toward the noise, moving as quickly as I could in a slight crouch, trying to see over the rise toward the logging road without making myself too big a target. A rustling in the dry leaves behind me drew my attention. Noah, outdoor guy that he was, knew to keep his head down as he inched up the slope.

  Below us, five or six people stood in the leaf-strewn roadbed, their backs to me. In a lopsided Wild West parody, they faced two men. The larger of the two wore a hunting jacket and held a shotgun, the barrel broken over his right forearm. He provided backup for a shorter man who was red in the face from yelling.

  Lionel Shoal, the giant with the shotgun, looked like a dog on point, ready to snap the barrels up and take aim at any provocation. I assumed he’d broken it open to reload after firing both barrels, the source of the two shots we’d heard. The smell of spent gunpowder hung in the air.

  The shorter man was doing all the yelling, pointing his finger threateningly at the group facing him. Everyone stood frozen and showed no sign of challenging him.

  “—don’t care what you were told. I want you off my property now.”

  Members of the group shuffled their feet, uneasily eyeing each other and hanging back from Shoal. I got the sense that, with one exception, they would be happy to leave Shoal’s property—if they dared turn their backs on him.

  The one exception took a brazen step toward Shoal: Magnolia Avinger.

  “Surely
, Mr. Shoal, you don’t want to go back on your word. Lisa Livson said—”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what Lisa Livson said. I’m saying get the hell off my property. Now!”

  The group behind her took a collective step back-ward. Maggy didn’t budge. If anything, she leaned into the fight. This was getting out of hand.

  “You—” Maggy started.

  “You violated your end of the bargain,” Shoal shouted her down. “Straying into areas off limits. That’s the final str—”

  A whoop sounded over the hill behind Shoal. Startled, Shoal spun around. Down the rough logging track jogged a pudgy man with a fringe of hair around his glistening bald head. Between huffs, he waved his arms and bellowed.

  Paying no attention to the awkward standoff he’d interrupted, he stumbled to a stop. His manicness created even more of a stir than Shoal’s cussing and screaming had, maybe because he looked so wild-eyed and scared.

  “Does anybody have a cell phone?” He faced first Shoal, then Maggy and the group at large, struggling for breath. “One that works up here? We got to get the cops. There’s a body. In a hole. We found it.”

  The energy that had propelled him pell-mell down the hill now spilled out in his words. He kept glancing over his shoulder, as if what he’d seen might have followed him.

  “What the hell you talking about?” Shoal said. “A body. Get hold of yourself. Lew, go see what the hell he’s blithering about.”

  “We gotta get the cops up here.” The unchecked raw emotion on his fleshy face was almost embarrassing.

  Everyone stood frozen, trying to process what to do. I checked the signal on my cell phone. No service on this side of the hill. I constantly alternate between hating the things and wondering what we did without them.

  I broke the silence. “I’ll climb the hill and call the sheriff.”

  To reach the easiest route up the hill and a better signal, I passed close by Shoal without a glance in his direction. He grabbed my elbow, turning me to face him. “I said get off my property.” He was so close, I could smell cinnamon on his breath.