Lake Charles

by Ed Lynskey

  The stumpy moccasin sidewinding over the water charged at starboard. Adrenaline coiled the springs in my legs. My head snapped around. The fiberglass fly rod was a flimsy defense weapon. I saw the thermal sensors pitting the snake’s triangular snout detected me. Fear clawed up my spine.

  Unable to recall if the moccasins bit their victims underwater, I didn’t abandon the bass boat. At the last second, the moccasin—unhinging its needlelike fangs and cottony throat in a defiant hiss—swerved. I blinked but then I saw no serpent. Was my hyperactive imagination duping me? This was too much. I reared upright, balanced my weight, and hollered out.

  “Edna! Yo, Edna!”

  My ears perked. Cobb’s faint shouts also met with no success. I wouldn’t put it past her to lay low and let us sweat. He loved messing with his victims on April Fools’ Day, and she’d the legitimate right to dish out any payback. The hide-and-seek theory, however, didn’t catch fire in me. I half-expected at the next inlet to spot her there snickering at us. Maybe she’d put in at a different landing and already returned to Lang’s Teahouse. The mosquitoes ate me raw as I neared my combustion point. The engine swished up water droplets as I took off to go rendezvous with Cobb.

  Within ten minutes, I entered the shadows now draping the old pavilion in its golden nostalgia. The Chinese lanterns and boat lamps twinkling along the T-dock reflected off the inky water as I eavesdropped on the lovers’ conspiratorial murmurs. “I could shake it all night. Me, too, honey. More wine? No, I’m already lightheaded. That’s the idea. Why you lout, kiss me, again.” By the next moment, I saw Cobb sitting on the T-dock puffing on a Marlboro and listening to the insects hum.

  I killed the engine and slid until the push pole ferried me through the algae. My lips quirked in contempt. No simple water hosing could remove the green crud from the bass boat’s undersides. A stiff bristle brush, a can of Bon Ami, and elbow grease might work. The drudgery of tackling it depressed me. I’d heard the idea of running a bass boat on its trailer through a car wash.

  “No Edna or jet ski?”

  I wagged my head. “Nothing of either. You?”

  “Ditto. She can’t be that far.”

  “Is this her idea of a joke? Getting payback maybe?”

  “A sick joke, I’d say.”

  “Is the Yellow Snake sheriff on duty?” I hated asking it. Tasting the bile coating my tongue, I closed the final three paces where I leapt to the T-dock. The rotten timber crumbled but didn’t collapse under me. I spat out the bile and secured my dock line.

  His flicked cigarette butt sizzled at striking the water. “Bonehead move.”

  “Why? My arrest is separate from this.”

  “Not from the sheriff’s point of view. Report her missing, and he’ll throw you some hinky looks. Three guesses where that leads.”

  My dicey arrest for Ashleigh’s murder backed up Cobb’s claim. My trust in the Yellow Snake law enforcement ran low.

  “Then I’m all ears.”

  His voice turned earnest. “We can track down Edna.”

  “By searching where?”

  “We haven’t covered back in the laurel.”

  “With just the two of us?”

  “All the better reason to get started.”

  “Do we separate again?”

  “No, we stick together. She might be hurt, and we’ll need to portage her out.”

  “I don’t like how that sounds.”

  “Me either.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dank night dimmed the jungled shores of Lake Charles. Cobb’s rattles for breath was an attack of nerves, exhaustion, or smoker’s lungs. Our shouts ringing out to hail Edna fell hoarser. Soldiering on struck me as asinine, especially given our return trip still left back to Lang’s Teahouse.

  “Wait up, Cobb. We better turn around.”

  His grasp dropped from holding a tree branch. “We’ve barely made a dent.”

  “What does slopping around in the pitch dark get us?”

  “Try your flashlight.”

  I already knew it was a dud. My flick of the switch sparked no light. “Dead batteries or else the bulb is fried.” I pitched the useless flashlight.

  “Holy fuck, did she pull a D.B. Cooper on us?”

  Kneading the kinks from my corded neck muscles, I appreciated Cobb’s sense of humor. “D.B. had some balls parachuting into the toolies, but the Feds will smoke him out. They never back off from a manhunt.”

  “My money says he’s still on the lam.”

  “My money says he’s a pile of bear scat,” I said, thinking life on the lam was anything but glamorous despite what the bad asses in the movies showed us.

  He grinned. “My aim is to stay out of such a pile.”

  “Then we better go back before the grizzlies and cougars go on night patrol.”

  “Damn straight.”

  After reversing our field, we hacked a portal through the alders enmeshed by clingy vines and prickly briars. A nasty peaches smell lifted off Lake Charles. We broke into the familiar clearing, and Lang’s Teahouse bore a malevolent aura before I startled to see the crescent moon’s bloody horn tips in the smoky sky, lowered as if to gore us.

  He was feeling it, too. “This haunt gives a man the willies.”

  My nod went to my cab truck. “If we go on, we can reach Yellow Snake inside of a half-hour.”

  “No, I’m too damn beat. Let’s catch our breath a little.”

  “Then help me start a fire.”

  The dry chunks of plank came torn off the T-dock while the awning’s tin strips clattered in the breeze. He set a lit match to the wad of cedar bark he’d gathered for the tinder. Orange flames strummed up, smoke whiffed into our eyes, and soon Lang’s Teahouse stood less ghoulish. The strobes of heat lightning mimicking the paparazzi’s camera flashes behind Will Thomas Mountain heralded no promise of rain.

  Our bass boats slotted on the trailer’s racks, and I drove my cab truck up from the boat ramp and parked. We claimed the fire’s upwind side and decked out on my blankets. I saw the bats knuckleball over our fire’s flickering radiance. A smattering of pale stars surrounded the crescent moon. His breathing grew heavy.

  “Are you awake?” I asked, but I got no reply.

  Also falling drowsy, I cast my lot with Hesperus, the dazzling evening star, and it towed me beyond Will Thomas Mountain into a violet haze. Voices spoke in my head, but I didn’t go ape shit. Then a wasp-waisted shape materialized—her approach nimble for her elegant tallness. Ashleigh’s hand beckoned, but as a reluctant conspirator, I didn’t reach for it.

  “Brendan, are you there?”

  “Yeah, down front.”

  “Splendid. Time grows short, so listen carefully. I can help you, if you help me. Deal?”

  “You see me at Lake Charles, don’t you?”

  “Indeed.”

  “I don’t like holding our talks like this.”

  “Oh, do I make you jittery?”

  “Right now, yeah, you do. So there.”

  “Don’t be afraid. My voice rings clear and honest. Trust me.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Didn’t I let you fuck me? Multiple orgasms rocked that night, in fact.”

  “That’s supposed to inspire trust? We were stoned.”

  She laughed and then sighed. “So much needs revealing . . .”

  Cobb’s bark cut in on my rumination. “Are you tripping on me, dude?

  I didn’t tell him how often I dreamed of dead folk or he’d freak. “Huh?”

  “I said the sheriff won’t make Edna a missing person for another twenty-four hours.”

  “They’ll also blow us off by saying she’s got a wild hair. Cops are assholes.”

  “Easy, man. Not all cops are rotten apples. The state cops are pros.”

  My head wagged. “Man, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. First it was Ashleigh and now this with Edna.”

  “Don’t think bad things about Edna.”

  I shifted over to
sprawl out lying on a hip, and the fire’s heat felt like a balm on my sore back muscles. “Smoking a spliff would level me out.”

  “True but you’ve gone straight.” He passed me a Marlboro, an inferior substitute. “Speaking of which, I’ve got a theory. Actually it’s based on the rumors I heard from my old dealer.”

  “What’s your theory?”

  “I believe local pot growers use Lake Charles.”

  A bit stunned, I processed it. “Pot? That’s a little out there.”

  “Is it?” He paused. “If I made deals, I’d grow my herbs here. Check out the unbeatable assets. There’s access to the state road. Who makes this scene anymore? No narcs, that’s for sure. The jungle we just hacked our way through camouflages the plants in the meadows. The lake irrigates the plants because they hoover up the water. All in all, Lake Charles makes for an A-1 set up.”

  “Why didn’t we run across any plots?”

  “Because we just got started at looking.”

  A fear unnerved me. “Did these pot growers capture her?”

  “My thought, too,” he said. “But they farm the plots in the dryer areas, and I doubt if she’d leave the shore at night.”

  “Our bass boats will better our luck tomorrow.”

  “You know it. Like us, she’s just hunkered down until first light.”

  We lounged back on the blankets, the campfire toasting our toes. Under the extreme circumstances, I felt released from my promise to her. “She favors you two getting back together.”

  “I figured as much, but let’s not get into it.”

  “Cool by me.”

  The blankets stored in my tool chest had a brake fluid odor. I rolled over to roast my other body half. The ground played our firm mattress, and Mama Jo’s quack osteopath would approve of it. The night insects’ jazz serenaded us. I hopped up and peeled back my blanket, scraped away the peanut flashbulbs and bottle caps, and then flopped down with a satisfied grunt.

  “More comfy now?”

  “Since I quit smoking pot, yeah, I am.”

  “Bravo for you, dude. I know that a few users see the blue devils until the detox finally takes hold.”

  “Not me,” I said, reminded of my Ashleigh dreams. “You remember my Uncle Ozzie, right?”

  “Vaguely. He was sort of tetched in the head, wasn’t he?”

  “Sort of. Mama Jo says he heard and saw things nobody else did. He admitted as much the one time when I asked him.”

  “Was he a soothsayer who saw into the future?”

  “We only talked for a few minutes.”

  “But you aren’t like him, not by a long stretch. Otherwise Moccasin Bend had better hustle out and truss you in a straitjacket.”

  “Even he never turned that daffy.”

  “Shit, I’m just messing with you. Pops knew your Uncle Ozzie. They worked in timber and knocked back a few drinks together.”

  “Yeah, so Uncle Ozzie also told me.”

  “If you get bounced into the rubber room, we’re still cool.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  He sprang up and went over to my cab truck. I heard him in his tackle box, rattling lures, rummaging through shit, and just generally aggravating me.

  “Where are they?”

  “Yo, keep it down.” I re-crossed my ankles. This near, the fire blasted my hide, so I backed up a couple feet and stretched out again on the blanket.

  He gave a coyote’s yip and clomped back to me. His tossed object glanced off my ribs.

  “Ouch.” I rubbed the sore spot. “What’s this?”

  “Your own .44 Bulldog. Being a big paranoid psycho, I strap a pair.”

  Palming the cold steel handgun set off an eerie association in me. David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz had favored a five-shot .44 Bulldog to carry out his sick thrill kills. We pressmen pored over the newspapers, and the Son of Sam was a big story. Well, screw Berkowitz and screw his demon-talking dog Sam. Clutching the .44, I felt safer. After sitting up, I thumb-cocked the knurly hammer and fingered the slick trigger.

  “Don’t leave home without one,” I said.

  “Believe it.” Cobb hulked into the circle of firelight.

  A grim insight struck me. “Cobb, is this fire smart? Your inquisitive pot farmers might spot it and come snooping.”

  “That’s the idea because now we’re ready for them.”

  After notching his balls, he rested in a crouch a few steps from the fire. The flames entranced his gaze. We had Lake Charles at our rear and faced into any oncoming menace. Despite the tension, I felt bored when he began talking shop.

  “Big Tiny crowed the pressmen’s union is back.”

  “He doesn’t know shit from shinola. The union is done with us in their fold.”

  “That strike hit ages ago. Time has moved on, and the union wants us. I’d pay to get a union card. It means higher salary, medical insurance, and more vacation. What’s there not to like?”

  “I agree,” I said. “But the union won’t risk another go with us.”

  “We’re damaged goods, eh?” He brought over a few broken planks, fed the fire, and flumped down next to me. “Not for nothing, but why is Mama Jo so damn hard on me?”

  My shrug came fast. “She’s hard on me, too.”

  “No, this feels personal like I did something bad to her.”

  “I can’t speak for her. She’s complicated.”

  “Why didn’t she ever remarry?”

  “Maybe for the same reason your old man never did.”

  “Once is enough, right. Does your old man ever call you?”

  “He mails me postcards.”

  “That’s it? Postcards? What does he scribble on them?”

  “Just Mama Jo’s address,” I replied and added, “He’s a man of few words.”

  “It’s more like a man of no words.” Cobb laughed at his glibness. Self-conscious at how I’d grown up fatherless and he hadn’t, I grunted. He gave me a disarming grin. “Pops’ history is filled with intrigue.”

  “Wasn’t he a leatherneck kicking ass in Korea?”

  “Part of the Frozen Chosin, sure he was, but then later he also spied for Uncle Sam.” Cobb deflected my next question by posing his first. “Why did you get Herzog for your lawyer?”

  “He’s the cheapest in the book. Before you say anything, I’ve wrestled with my own doubts about him, too.” My fleeting thought wondered how he kept his rates down. Incompetence? Laziness? Stupidity?

  “He showed he can hold his own in court.”

  “He did get me bail,” I said, with a memory of his projected scouting trip to Lake Charles.

  Before I could touch on it, Cobb asked, “Hey, what happened in Yellow Snake? I never did hear it all.”

  “I’m not up for giving a blow-by-blow account.”

  More tossed on planks sheeted up the red-orange embers into the dark sky. He stretched out on the blanket. “The gist will do. No hurry either since we’re pulling an all-nighter here.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “That night,” I told him, my eyes also enthralled by the crackling red-orange flames. “Mr. Kuzawa and you had blown town, so, I didn’t have my sidekick in tow.”

  “Sorry I didn’t call you. Business had beckoned, and you know how Pops is. Work is work. We ran the flatbed truck down to saw up a load of cypress and sold it for a fat profit.”

  “Anyway. That night. Everywhere I drove, the kids raved about college. Advanced education not in the cards for me, I felt a little left out.”

  “Brendan, sorry but you’re not prime college material.”

  “Hey, this timber hick nailed a 1250 on his SAT.”

  “Is that score good? Anyway, the future college pukes . . .”

  “Well, I left them in my dust, and I boogied down the old bypass. Kerns’s store was lit up, and I swung by and I saw this trick-painted van parked in his lot.”

  “Driven by the out-of-towners?”

  I nodded. “Schlepping inside to buy my smokes, I heard a girl
giggle.”

  “She was just mad keen to get rode hard.”

  “That part came later, but can I get on with my story? Inside Kerns sat watching TV. His old lady offered me a PBR. ‘I’m still a kid,’ I told her. ‘Yeah, but only the once,’ she said. We laughed and I quizzed Kerns about the gang milling around outside.

  “‘That’s my moron nephew who goes by J.D.,’ said Kerns. ‘His girlfriend is a spoiled, rich brat from Yellow Snake.’” I laughed. He didn’t. I took it that Kerns didn’t like J.D. or his girlfriend, especially after he had a few belts.

  “We chewed the fat a little more. Bored again, I said my good-byes and stepped outside. This time the girl’s laugh made me ask, ‘Anything doing?’ ‘Slide on over and find out,’ she invited me. So I did. Now, this gal . . .” Here I tapped Cobb on the elbow.

  He grinned at me. “She came stacked, eh?”

  “Stacked to the rafters,” I said. “Ashleigh wore a slinky, purple gown like it was her second skin. They passed me a joint, and who turns down a freebie buzz? I took several hits. They also had an extra The Devil’s Own ticket.”

  “The Devil’s Own.” He spat into the fire. “Boil me alive in hot tar first.”

  “Anyway. I hitched aboard the party van. J.D. and Ashleigh commandeered the captain’s seats, so I partied with the ass ugly dudes in back.”

  “Three cheers for the ass ugly dudes.”

  “Always. ‘What’s up with this reefer?’ I asked this goateed dude sucking on an ice hookah. They called him Goat. ‘One toke and you’ll talk to the devils.’ He bleated through his adenoids. I didn’t like him, but I did a hit. ‘Go slower on that,’ he advised me. ‘Or it’ll blow off your balls.’”

  “Not to rush you, but can you skip over to the motel room?”

  Nodding, I saw the stark images inside it replay. Ashleigh’s dead eyes didn’t glitter. A taut smile barbed her mouth corners. Lying there shocked in the bed, I saw her purple gown she left draped over the mini-fridge. The Devil’s Own guitar riffs still reverberated through my skull, and I quaked to howl out my lungs like some rabid, wild beast.

  “Well, Brendan …”

  “Our motel room felt cramped. Musty. I remember shambling out into the humid night to use the coin phone. I dropped my first dime, lost it in the gravel. Mrs. Cornwell drowsing in her office didn’t hear me curse. My call patched through, I sucked in a gulp of air, and I told the sheriff’s dispatcher that the girl was stone dead. It was then I realized I was in deep shit.”