Lake Charles

by Ed Lynskey

  How far did Bubba Two lag behind me? A hundred yards into the firs, I came to a fallen log. Hatching a plan on the fly, I plunked down on it as if to rest. Had I glimpsed a pants leg dodging behind the boulder a penny toss from me? I didn’t light a Marlboro. Nicotine left me too lazy. My hand was a visor at my eyes lifting to gauge how much daylight I had left. As if in a big rush, I bounded off only to fake my trip over a stone and wrenching my ankle. Grabbing it, I grimaced as if I was in crippling pain.

  Dragging my bum ankle, I staggered back to the log and waited for Bubba Two. Would he take the bait and ambush a wounded man? I fisted both .44s and tensed to drop behind the log and rip out a heavy barrage of Magnum loads. My slow count hit twenty but nothing happened. A sheepish red then flushed into my face.

  “Who’s out there?” I hollered.

  Still nothing. I’d outfoxed myself because there was no Bubba Two. I returned to the shadows now engulfing the campsite. The two corpses in this heat smelled ripe. My more careful search pulled a green matchbook from the dead archer’s pocket. My eyebrows hiked as my thumb pad traced the gold bird embossed on the matchbook. I’d cadged a similar matchbook from the Bell canning jar in the Chewink Motel’s office. My curiosity in the dead archer bumped up a few notches.

  I grabbed a shock of his greasy hair and wrested his zitty face to the direct sunlight. I still didn’t know him from Adam’s housecat. My eyes roved to the ganja curing bags lashed to the tree branches. It made sense this pot grower also smoked his product. So then where did he stash his boodle?

  The pup tent drew me over. Its poles ripped out of the sand and, enduring the gamey body odor, I peeled away the ground cloth. The prone sleeper had left his foot, hip, and shoulder impressions in the sand. A wet patch of sand in the middle looked recently dug out.

  “The fool buried his dope.”

  I plunged in the Buck knife. Sure enough, its blade struck an object. My hands shoveled out the sand and unearthed a plastic baggie. I sniffed at its opening—oh yeah, badass reefer. I also scared up a packet of Zig-Zag papers, skinned me a fat joint, and struck a match to light it.

  I stalled, mumbling. “Getting blitzed is a bad percentage play. I better not do it.”

  Grinding out the match and joint, I rejected the devil’s weed. My kicking the fishing equipment was in frustration. The wicker creel basket rolled off, and the yellow parrot barrette thrown out gleamed in the sunlight. Joy swelled in me. It had to be Edna’s barrette. I held the proof in my palm she’d been here. Maybe she dropped the barrette on purpose. After taking the fifth of whiskey, I quit the campsite, moving out again under the firs.

  After holding to a dogtrot for I don’t know how long, I hit a wall and flamed out. My eyelids grew leaden, and my knees wobbly. A chinaberry tree offered me some shade from the swelter. I flumped down on the soft moss and sobbed a tight gulp before a fitful nap overcame me. From the start, I sensed this dream favored the same motif.

  Ashleigh Sizemore, a bundle of curves and sass in a tight lavender gown, was fussing in her matching clutch bag. She lit a rolled joint, puffed it, and offered it to me. “Brendan, let’s party.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need anymore grief.”

  “J.D. told me in the van you’re a wimp.” She snapped shut her clutch bag. “Relax some, hey? I won’t devour you like Circe did Ulysses’ mariners after she cast them into a herd of swine.”

  “I’ve never heard of her or them, but don’t you owe me a few explanations like on that train wreck you left me at the Chewink?”

  “Honestly, this uptight and cranky, you’re a regular grinch. Okay, I’ll give you one revelation: you didn’t kill me.”

  “I reached that conclusion on my own.”

  “But you never heard me say it until now. You have a quest to go on.”

  “What sort of a quest?”

  “Simple. Find and catch my killer, and you can save us both.”

  “Listen you, this is my life. Nothing makes sense in it since I partied with you. Fatal ambushes. Blood-chilling dreams. Pot gardens. Bum arrests. Sadistic sheriff’s deputies. I’ve just about had it with you.”

  “Your nailing my killer is our way out of this.” She began fading to a temporary black.

  “You don’t leave me much choice.”

  Then a Eureka moment shook me awake. My heart banged high in my throat because I knew the right person to call and give me a hand. Matter of fact, he’d know how to get to the bottom of things, extra pronto, as he liked to say.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Speak up … you say my boy is dead?”

  The man’s growl erupted from deep in his chest. My palm capped the handset while my other hand swiped at the welling tears.

  “Brendan? Are you there? Okay, that’s good. I thought you guys went fishing at Lake Charles.”

  “We did but then we ran into some flak.”

  “Where are you, son?”

  “I’m still at Lake Charles,” I said, staring at the clapboard siding to the cash-and-carry store we’d driven by on Friday.

  I heard Mr. Kuzawa snatch an audible breath. “Who the fuck did this to my boy?”

  “I better not give out the details over the line. Meet me instead.”

  “No sweat. Where?”

  “Near the spillway at the Lake Charles dam there’s an old parking area the hunters and fishermen like to use.”

  “I know it. When?”

  “It’s got to be tonight, sir.”

  “These same shitbirds also shanghaied Edna?”

  “It looks that way to me.”

  “I’ll see you there extra pronto.”

  “You might want to come armed for trouble.”

  “Ain’t no might about it. We’ve gone to war. This is a dogfight to the finish. Some motherfucker will pay. Big time. Over and out.”

  I racked the handset and hauled up the phone directory on its chain. My shaky fingers struck another match, riffled through the sticky pages, and tore out the page listing the Tennessee State Police. Cobb had told me the state boys were pros, and I might need the pros on my side since the Yellow Snake law reeked of corruption. My knee nudged the telephone booth door to collapse outward.

  As I stepped back into the muggy night, for some odd reason I visualized Angus placing phone calls and mailing me postcards at such a rural store in Valdez. I was at a loss to say why Valdez exerted its psychic tug on me, but it did, and it grew fiercer everyday. Could I drive there in three or four days? I could use a boost from him right now, but as always, he wasn’t there for either of us.

  Alarm jolted me back to the present. Mr. Kuzawa and I were off to do whatever. ‘Gone to war,’ he’d said over the phone. ‘A dogfight to the finish.’ He growled like a junkyard dog, but wasn’t he venting? Just then, I heard a car engine drone out on the state road. A pair of headlamps stabbing the dark sent me scurrying around the store’s rear corner. I spilled to the dirt before peering out, glad to watch the threatening car chuff by the store, and me.

  Simon the bait shop owner had told us their new packing factory ran a graveyard shift, so maybe a local was off to pluck chicken feathers for a paycheck. The car’s red taillights dissolved in the dark as I breathed again. I decided to break into the store, get my supplies, and pay for the damages. There was no rear door. So I used Cobb’s Buck knife to jimmy a window, crawled feet-first through the portal, and landed on my rump. I shut my eyes and reopened them, adjusting to the interior’s womblike darkness. The burlap I rose up from smelled fusty.

  My lit match produced a candle stub’s glow as I did a 360. The nearest shelves displayed rusty plow points, horseshoes, and hand saws—our region’s antiques out for sale. Collectors flocked to the lowland emporiums for the sexy swag like family heirloom furniture. Our ancestors couldn’t afford to buy furniture, only plow points to till the rocky soil and raise beans—you know, to eat.

  Two-cell flashlights were also out for sale. I used care not to play one’s beam over any window and tip off a pas
serby. A calico resting curled up on the countertop didn’t flick a whisker. I thought it stuffed by a taxidermist until I stroked the silky, purring fur. I missed Mrs. Wang’s Oscar, but this was a bad time to get sentimental over cats.

  “We’ll need rations.”

  I snapped out a brown paper sack from under the checkout counter and smelled the fruity whiff of pot smoke. The damn cannabis was everywhere. I bagged a few canned delicacies like sardines packed in mustard and the less appealing Spam. I stuffed in a fistful of beef jerky, but I skipped the granola bars sold to the leaf peeper tourists. The calico’s amber eyes gleamed at me. It did a subpar job as a burglar alarm, a point in my favor.

  After I scribbled down my purchases with their estimated prices on a scrap of butcher paper, I computed the sum. I started rechecking my figures but figured nuts on it. An Andy Jackson, our state’s most lauded hero, went under the calico’s paw. The sleepy storeowner might grouch in the morning, but he earned a tidy profit without having to lift a finger. As an afterthought, I fattened the tip with a fiver, peeled open a sardine tin, and gave the purring calico another affectionate pat.

  I polished off the sardines and pitched aside the tin. The same portal was my exit, and I left the store. Carrying both .44s in my pockets, I banged my shins on a rail fence while I moved toward the state road. My footfall slapped in a dogtrot over the asphalt while the dark hush grew deafening. The brutal image of a hostile arrow or bullet piercing my chest hectored me.

  There’s too much death, I shuddered. All your life you busted your ass, paid your taxes, and bathed daily. Then one day the ax fell, and you scrapped like a shithouse rat just to stay alive. I switched the bulky paper bag to cradle in my other arm, and the cans rattled together. The wood smoke lay acrid and sooty in the air from the fires devouring the treed ridges. I felt nothing but pity for the fire crews knocking down a dollar over minimum because they earned every nickel.

  Until the present, I’d nothing against the local pot farmers, but their twisted shit had crossed my family, and thinking about it just PO’d me more. I was damn tempted to carry on Cobb’s vendetta against them, but first I’d go find Edna.

  ***

  The mucky stench to Lake Charles grew stronger at my approach to the earth dam. Moving on the pads of my feet, I advanced, halting every four steps, my radar alert for any trouble. At my next pause, I flinched. A hard cylinder had screwed into my ear. My balls rode up as I identified the hard cylinder as a steel gun barrel.

  “Pass-phrase?” asked the man with cat paws for feet.

  “No pass-phrase. It’s just me, Brendan. What did you drive?”

  Mr. Kuzawa took the muzzle to the 12-gauge from my ear. It was good to hear again. He abandoned the deeper shadows. Several inches over six feet and built husky like Lee Majors with a bricklayer’s shoulders, Mr. Kuzawa used a deceptive shuffle. He liked a flattop buzz cut like seen in the Steve Roper comic strip. His chin, these days beardless, jutted at me.

  “A trucker pal dropped me off at the state road, and I took a shortcut through the woods. Spin me up again.”

  “Cobb, Edna, and I drove to Lang’s Teahouse on Saturday. We had Lake Charles all to ourselves, fishing and boating. Then Edna threw a hissy fit and ripped off on the jet ski. That’s when the shit started to hit the fan.”

  “That fucking crotch rocket is an abomination. I kick myself for lending her the money. Did Cobb and she bicker again over his drinking?”

  “Naturally. Cobb and I returned to the old marina, but she never showed. So we left and scouted the boonies until sunset. Worried sick, we returned and camped at the old marina. Two hicks sneaked in to bushwhack us, and I greased one of them.”

  “At night? Do you see with cat eyes?”

  “A lucky shot in the dark is all.”

  “Boy, I’ll say. Give me the rest.”

  “At daybreak, I ditched his weighted corpse in Lake Charles, and we bugged out after Edna. Our hike was rugged going. We bungled across a pot garden, and further on we hit a campsite. As we cased it, a grower armed with a crossbow shafted an arrow through Cobb. I’m sorry. He never saw or knew what struck him.”

  Mr. Kuzawa groaned and ruffled his brawny shoulders. “Okay, okay. Where’s my boy’s body now?”

  “He’s still at the campsite underneath the tree branches I cut.” Telling what I’d done sounded pathetic, and my gut muscles clenched.

  “Holy Jesus, how can something like this happen to a father?” Mr. Kuzawa shifted in his stance. “My boy can keep. Our first mission is to rescue your sister.” He thrust the hard cylinder at me. “I requisitioned this 12-gauge, and it’s yours.”

  “Did you bring any grenades or bazookas?” I said, trying for a joke.

  “I can get my hands on any C4 explosives we might need.”

  “I’ll just take your word for it.”

  We left the earth dam for the gloomy dark woods. My flashlight beam picked up a rabbit trail that we followed. The tangy pitch pine cleared my sinuses. I sensed the proximity of Lake Charles that had attached its psychic tentacles to me. I’d almost broken free, getting as far as the cash-and-carry store where I then teamed with Mr. Kuzawa to return. My best opportunity to reach Edna had to lie along the shores of Lake Charles. The gut-wrenching specter of Cobb’s death appalled me. I’d grown too callous over seeing the spilled blood. I’d pray but I hadn’t attended Mass, recited a rosary, or made a Confession since my early teens.

  “Wait up, Brendan. Your hands are full. If we plow into a shit storm, that’s all she wrote. Ditch those damn cans. I hate Spam anyway. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. We’ll live off the land.”

  “Can you be more specific?” I asked, leery to trash any food.

  “We’ll be scroungers. Save the hooch. I like how it fires my blood.”

  I rummaged inside the paper bag and pocketed the other sardines. He traded me a clutch of 00-buckshot shells for the beef jerkies but rebuffed my offer to take one of Cobb’s .44s.

  “Pop guns aren’t for me. No, the 12-gauges are boss. In fact, one night before the Chosin Reservoir campaign, I lit a blowtorch to crop off the barrel to a 12-gauge—”

  “I’ll just go and get rid of these cans,” I said, not up for listening to any war stories. I went down to the shore and slung the bag to splat into Lake Charles. By the time of my return, Mr. Kuzawa had cracked open and drained a third of the whiskey bottle, giving his eyes a spooky radioactive glint. I got the bone-chilling impression that he viewed us as a pair of leathernecks back fighting it out on the Chosin Reservoir.

  “Did this big bug kidnap Edna?”

  “She vanished from the same area, and I found her barrette lying in their campsite.”

  “Don’t let it drive you nuts, son. We’ll soon evacuate her.” He chambered a 00-buckshot load into his 12-gauge.

  As we took off again, I forced a self-deprecating chuckle. “I feel ridiculous marching through the boonies armed like two vigilantes.”

  “We’ll be the rangers.”

  “No-no, uh-uh. We’re nothing like them,” I said, knowing their leader Cullen didn’t let rational thinking govern his often rash actions. We had to be smarter than he was.

  “We’re not near the campsite, are we?” asked Mr. Kuzawa.

  “Two hours walking. You know, I fixed Cobb’s killer. He’d no I.D. on him, but he’s dead.”

  “A commendable action and you’ve my thanks, but this big bug gave the orders. So now I’ll go squash the big bug.”

  “Kill him?” I arched a hard glance at him.

  He gave me a nod. “I’m trembling to explode with rage, and I can’t pull out even if I tried. Are you with me or not?”

  “All right.” I waved at him to press on. “I’m behind you.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear from you.”

  Lake Charles was our visible landmark as we crossed a hilly pine forest. Soon the trunks and boulders clarified in the gathering daylight, and a great horned owl, all wings, swooped down at us. Mr. Kuz
awa laughed at my cowering. The laurel branches slashed at our pumping thighs, and skirting the boulders slowed our progress. At last, Mr. Kuzawa gave a shout.

  “Whoa, Brendan. Take five, son. Going at this clip, I’ll keel over from a coronary.”

  “Blame it on the elevation.” I bent over at the waist, bracing my hands on my knees, my lungs also a wheezing bellows. “The oxygen runs thinner up here.”

  “Uh-huh. Never mind I don’t look a day over fifty-five or your pack-a-day habit.”

  “Don’t slam my cigarettes. Their tar counteracts the ink fumes eating away at my lung tissue.”

  “Sure, you’re the Six Million Dollar Man.” Mr. Kuzawa shrugged back his bullish shoulders. “Is there less backstabbing at work? Cobb didn’t seem to think so.”

  “Things could always be better. Brothers still don’t speak, but the past three years we’ve done well enough to turn a profit and get our annual bonus. You’ve got to like that.”

  “That strike took place—what was it?—twenty-odd years ago. The outside agitators were behind it. Pierre Spartacus split Umpire down the middle. The sides drew up, and it was a local war.” Jutting his chin, Mr. Kuzawa scoffed. “What a waste. Why do the stubborn pressmen still fight that battle? Let bygones be bygones, I’d say to them.”

  My cynical glance saw him nod. Longerbeam Printery wasn’t a jewel of a job, but I worked there, and he hadn’t for years. What did he know about it? The bitter, deep rancor would never let up. Some men were born to bear grudges. The strike ended before I was born, but I had to work in its ugly aftermath, not much fun on some days.

  “Rested up?” I was on my feet.

  He motioned with his 12-gauge to usher me off down the swale made a streambed in rainy April. My two-fisted grip to my 12-gauge didn’t let up. The .44s in my pockets hit my thighs. Perspiration oiled my palms, and I wiped them on my bandana. My hand sweats were a detox by-product, and I would probably never get over the physical craving to fire up a joint. My tongue felt dry as a stick of chalk. If I ever wanted to detox again, I’d pick a less nerve-wracking time than it was right now. He knew I hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. At the first dry, mossy patch, we bivouacked on his garbage bags spread out for ground cloths, one to each side of a fallen log.