The Drifter's Wheel

by Phillip DePoy

  “And this man had the unlikely name of Truck Jackson.”

  “He said so. But the Truck Jackson that was married to the woman I met with this morning would have to be in his eighties, and the man in my kitchen was barely thirty. Not to mention that the Truck Jackson we’re talking about—”

  “As if there could be more than one … ”

  “Is really dead,” I concluded. “Killed, or so Polly Jackson told me, by his own brother.”

  “This is eerie,” he conceded. “It has great eeriosity.”

  “Even more so when you know that the man who visited me also visited a crazy old man and my friend Lucinda early that same night, each time claiming to be someone else.”

  “Some other person?” He sat forward, a bit more awake.

  “Sort of. It’s a little confused, but I think he was, each time, a variation of someone in the Jackson brood. Always killing his brother.”

  “And then a man who looks almost exactly like him ends up dead. Say, this is good.”

  “And when you talk to the person, the visitor,” I said, tones hushed, “he’s very convincing. I could believe that he might actually be someone from another time. Or a person who could visit people in other times as easily as I visit you in Atlanta.”

  Andrews looked around. “I hope he doesn’t have to contend with this kind of traffic.”

  After another hour of just that sort of thing, the cars began to part bumpers, speeds eased up over ten miles per hour, and night fell over everything. I turned on the classical music radio station, and Andrews settled back watching the moon rise. By nine thirty or so we’d made it to Dahlonega. I wanted coffee, and Andrews was hungry. Once he mentioned it, I was, too.

  A very nice café was open in the more picturesque main part of downtown. We sat, ordered expensive coffee and overpriced sandwiches, and Andrews perused the festoonery on the walls.

  “So this used to be a mining town, is that right?” he finally asked, staring at a flattened, burnished plate that had once been used to pan gold.

  “Yes. You can still go sift though silt and find a bit of gold dust if you like. Tourists do it all the time. It’s a large part of the town’s revenue. That and the Smith House on Chestatee.”

  “We’ve eaten there,” he said, voice reverent, obviously remembering the fried okra. “Why aren’t we there now?”

  “They don’t stay open this late. They’re a family restaurant. Families eat early. Strange single men eat dinner this late, not families.”

  “Well, we’re certainly not the only ones here tonight.” He looked around. The place was kind of crowded for a weeknight.

  “We might be in the middle of Gold Rush Days,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “The town has a sort of festival to commemorate the first discovery of gold here—1828, I think.”

  “Plus, it gives the rubes an excuse to gawk at the autumn colors while they’re eating a ten-dollar tuna sandwich.” Andrews was nothing if not a cynic. “Did anyone ever really find gold here?”

  As I continued to look around, I had the strange sensation that the objects in the room were trying to tell me something; that I was seeing information there that was important, but that I couldn’t quite bring to the front of my mind.

  “Gold was found,” I told Andrews, “but it really wasn’t the sort of gold rush that, say, California experienced. Even today people will tell you that the really significant veins were never found. Old-timers will tell you that miners didn’t go far enough, deep enough. It’s all still out there somewhere, silently waiting to be discovered.”

  “What do you think?”

  I focused on Andrews. “I think that the promise of gold is more alluring—and more dangerous—than actually finding it.”

  “The fantasy is more powerful than the fact.”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “Reality is always doomed to disappoint, whereas the dream is always perfect.”

  “But the hope of finding something like that,” he said, his eyes wandering back to the gold pan, “something that will change your life—it’s a thing that keeps some people going when everything tells them to quit.”

  Thank God our sandwiches came at that moment and saved us both from any further such far-flung philosophies, before either of us started quoting from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—or singing the theme song from Fame.

  We were back on the road in under an hour. The drive from Dahlonega was much less strange with someone else in the truck.

  The fog had lifted a bit from the night before, and instead of careening down a mountain, I was struggling up it. My old truck demanded to be set in lower gears about half the time. We were nearly another two hours getting to Blue Mountain.

  Andrews had settled in his seat and was napping on and off, so I was left to worry that I’d spent a whole day in Atlanta with little more to show for it than a confused recollection of a lost woman and a Shakespeare scholar. Neither of which, upon even the most shallow reflection, was likely to help me a great deal in my current endeavor. In fact, Polly Hutchinson’s ranting only confused matters; and I would most certainly have to discover why Andrews had changed his mind about coming with me before I could trust anything he said or did.

  So by the time the truck pulled into my front yard and I turned off the engine, I was cold, tired, and no closer to any answers than I had been twenty-four hours before, with only one day left to find out anything that might help Skidmore. I had the distinct, sinking sensation that this time, for the first time, I would be of absolutely no use to him. And to make matters worse, my failure might lead to the conviction of an innocent old man. If Skidmore had no other suspect, he might keep Hovis Daniels. The real killer would get away.

  Why had I gone to Atlanta? It had been a stunningly rash mistake. I could see that. And what good would Andrews be? Why had I thought he could help? And, seriously, what sort of person drags a good friend into a situation where a murderer, a man utterly unhinged, is on the loose? And on top of it all, I could see the deadline, Millroy’s arbitrary deadline, coming at me like a cannonball.

  “Are we going to sit in the truck all night,” Andrews murmured, “or are you going to invite me in for a drink?”

  I roused myself.

  “Come on,” I grumbled. “I’ve got your favorite apple brandy.”

  He sat up instantly and throttled the door handle, trying to get out of the truck as quickly as he could.

  In point of fact, the term “apple brandy” was probably too genteel an appellation for the clear liquid lightning he liked. I had a dozen or so bottles in my pantry. When John Chapman, the real Johnny Appleseed, planted his legendary leafy legacy, the trees were welcomed not for the promise of bobbing apples, nor for Mother’s apple pie. The primary reason early Americans wanted the red fruit was for the production of fermented or distilled potables: applejack, apple beer, apple brandy—even apple wine, if you can call such a noxious concoction wine at all. But the queen of these, in Blue Mountain, at least, was a sort of Kirschwasser-strength, finely distilled apple brandy, so clear that it was, in fact, transparent, invisible to the eye. In the first taste one could actually experience the very cooking fires of Johnny Appleseed himself; a morning in 1807; an autumn afternoon when sunlight stopped the motion of the falling leaves for a moment, and all the world was still because all the world knew peace; a perfect contentment. Of course, the second taste sometimes provoked unconsciousness in the uninitiated.

  Andrews was, however, quite initiated, and beat me to my front door, enlivened by the mere promise of such elixir. He stood there, forgetting that I never locked my door.

  “It’s open,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, right.” He stumbled in.

  Before he was three steps past the threshold, he fell, collapsing into a rumpled mess on the floor.

  I was wondering what he had tripped over when a black boulder flew out of the doorway and landed on top of me.

  Wheezing and stinking, the man instantly
had his hands around my throat. He was squeezing so hard that he shut off the blood going to my brain and my eyes rolled back in my head. I was seconds away from blacking out when I kicked out with both legs, pushed myself over onto my side. The man was surprised, lost a bit of his grip, and we ended up lying side by side on my front porch.

  If the moon had been full I might have seen more clearly, but even as it was, I was almost certain that my attacker was Truck Jackson—easily fifty pounds lighter and a head shorter than I. Before he could get his bearings, I pushed myself away from him and scrambled to my feet.

  He moved quickly as well, up on one elbow and producing a pistol out of nowhere.

  “I don’t want to shoot you.”

  His face was still mostly shadow, but the voice confirmed his identity. Who else, I thought foolishly, would be attacking me at this time of night?

  Apparently unthreatened by the sight of a gun, I kicked at it and connected, knocking it out of his hand and into the yard. He flew up and off the porch, chasing it. I went after him.

  He was breathing like a broken accordion, and staggering as much as searching for his gun.

  I flung myself forward and grabbed his arm. It was mostly bone. He turned toward me and the next thing I knew there was a forehead in my face. A sickening crunch and a blazing pain told me that he might have broken my nose with a head-butt.

  His problem was that pain made me angrier—maybe there was a bit of panic in my blood as well. It seemed obvious that if he found his gun he would shoot me.

  So I shook his arm violently and twisted, the way I’d seen dozens of people do when they were wringing a chicken’s neck. Something snapped and he howled. I kicked the back of his right ankle and his foot flew upward. He lost his balance and landed hard on his back; I could hear the breath knocked out of him. He lay, groaning and cursing in a language all his own, on the ground.

  I raged about for a moment, found the gun, and held it out for him to see.

  “Did you drop this?” I said between heavy breaths.

  “Give it to me,” he managed weakly, “it’s mine.”

  “Yes, I know it’s yours. You just tried to shoot me with it, remember?”

  “No, I didn’t. And it’s not loaded.”

  I pointed the gun at his knee, no more than five feet away.

  “Really?” I pretended to squeeze the trigger.

  “Stop!” He scrambled to sit up. “Stop it!”

  “Look,” I barked, “I’m going to shoot you in that knee in one second. You’ve caused me a great deal of distraction.”

  A low rumble from my doorway caused me to look that way. Andrews was dragging himself to a standing posture.

  “What the hell?” he stammered, holding the side of his face and squinting in my direction.

  Before I could say the first word of explanation, a tree limb cracked against the side of my skull and I wobbled sideways, dropping the pistol.

  A furtive black shadow shot past me, retrieved the gun, and pointed it directly at Andrews. “Move, Andrews!” I bellowed.

  But the gun exploded, blood erupted, and Andrews crumpled onto my living room floor.

  A second shot fizzed past my arm.

  I dove toward the darker shadows at the side of the porch, hit the ground, and rolled insanely, tumbling down the slope of the yard.

  I stopped myself and bolted to my feet, eyes wild. But the yard was vacant; the man had disappeared.

  Andrews was as silent as the grave.

  Eleven

  The next hour or so was a blur. I barely remembered wandering inside my house to call for an ambulance. I remembered dialing Skidmore and Lucinda only a little better. Sometime after that Andrews sat up holding his bleeding head, growled like a bear, and told me he wanted to go back to Atlanta. He stopped when he saw all the blood on my face, panicked, and went inside to the phone before I could stop him. I tried to explain that I’d already called the emergency number, but he demanded another team. So by the time Lucinda arrived, there were three police cars and two ambulances in my yard. And neither Andrews nor I was willing to go to the hospital.

  Lucinda, with a combination of great tenderness and a nurse’s cruelty, snapped the cartilage in my nose back into place. I hollered so loud it chased a battery of bats from the trees in my backyard.

  Paramedics were talking about how lucky Andrews had been. The bullet had barely grazed his temple and the side of his skull just above the ear. An inch to the left and he’d have been dead in seconds; half an inch lower and he’d be deaf on one side. As it was, he didn’t really even need stitches. He was cleaned up and patched up while Lucinda was still dabbing my face with hydrogen peroxide.

  My front door was the most seriously wounded. The bullet that all but missed Andrews had split the timbers in my thick oak door.

  That door had endured several such assaults, and I was propelled, in my dizzy state, to see a metaphor. A door is an entrance. My entrance was constantly attacked, even though I never locked it. Why would that be, and what did it mean for my psyche?

  As luck would have it, Lucinda called me back to the world of the relatively sane.

  “There.” She was putting away her kit. “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes, it hurts. I broke my nose.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” She said the words in such comforting tones I nearly cried.

  “My houseguest will live?” I lifted my head in the direction of Dr. Andrews. He was holding court.

  “When the bullet was coming my way,” Andrews was telling paramedics and deputies, “I knew I had to be sharp. I pulled a bit this way, then dropped. The man with the gun went after Dr. Devilin then. But by the time I managed to rouse myself, he had vanished.”

  “Did you get a look at him?” Deputy Melissa Mathews was taking notes and, as usual, was less charmed by Andrews than he would have hoped for.

  “He was a shadow.” Andrews looked up into the sky. “There was only moonlight.”

  “He’ll live,” Lucinda assured me, a faint smile on her lips.

  Deputy Crawdad Pritchett was busy digging in my front door, trying to dislodge the bullet there, I assumed.

  Sheriff Skidmore Needle sat down beside me.

  “You okay?”

  “Define ‘okay,’” I mumbled. “My nose is broken.”

  “Aw,” he disallowed, examining my face, “it’s all fixed now. Plus, I can’t see what harm it could do—face like yours.”

  “Shut up and bite me, do you mind?” I glanced up at him.

  “I’m a little busy for that right now,” he said. “Let’s just get the facts.”

  “It was the guy.” I lowered my voice. I had no idea why. “It was Truck Jackson or Jacob or whatever his name is, the guy that visited us. The guy that killed the man who’s lying over at the Deveroe Brothers’ Funeral Parlor.”

  “You think.”

  “I do think,” I insisted. “Look, not to be too frantic about it, but there’s a maniac loose. He thinks he’s immortal or that he can time travel or something—and he has a really big gun!”

  Skidmore looked over at Andrews, then into my house past where Crawdad was working.

  “Take me through this,” Skid said slowly. “The last time I saw you I was hauling Hovis Daniels out of your kitchen. I come back the next night and Dr. Andrews is here, shot up, and your house is a mess.”

  “It is?” I stared at Crawdad.

  I hadn’t even noticed. I peered in. The living room had been ransacked, I could see that. I started to stand.

  “Hold up,” Skid insisted, his hand on my shoulder. “First things first.”

  “You mean about Andrews,” I surmised. “I called him to ask for his help; he refused. But he did a bit of research for me, and it prompted me to run off—foolishly, as it turns out—to Atlanta. I did manage to bring him back with me, however, so that he could dodge a bullet on my front porch.”

  “What made you think you wanted to go to Atlanta?” He shook his head.

&n
bsp; “I told you I was going when I called you.”

  “Really?” He squinted, trying to remember.

  “A woman named Polly Hutchinson.” I caught Lucinda’s eye. “One of the descendants of the famous Hutchinson Family. She claims to have been a big-band singer in the late 1940s. She was married to Truck Jackson.”

  “Oh, my,” Lucinda whispered. “No wonder you wanted to go.”

  “Didn’t pan out?” Skid asked.

  “I met with her. She’s in her eighties, memory challenged, and—she said that her husband, whose name was, in fact, Truck Jackson, came up to Blue Mountain over a question of inheritance in the Jackson tribe.”

  “That doesn’t sound foolish at all,” Skid said, all attention. “You said your trip to Atlanta was foolish—”

  “That Truck Jackson came up here in 1950 and was never seen again.” I sighed. “And the woman who told me about it, this Polly Hutchinson Jackson, is just the littlest bit nuts.”

  “But—” Lucinda began.

  “Where’s my apple brandy!” Andrews roared. “Damn, what do I have to do? Get shot? Wait. Already did it. And I still don’t have my damned apple brandy.”

  “He may be verging on hysteria,” I whispered to Skid.

  “Verging?”

  “Come on,” I called to Andrews, standing, “it’s in my pantry, unless someone took it in the raid.”

  “Raid?” Andrews looked around. “Come in the house,” I told him.

  We danced past Crawdad and confronted my living room. It was a wreck. Chairs were shoved everywhere, pillows thrown asunder, books and records and CDs and tapes strewn everywhere—but my tapes had endured the worst wrath.

  Tapes.

  “Wait.” I froze. “Hold on.”

  “What is it?” Skidmore was right behind me.

  “I think the guy was looking for the tape I made of him. The tape recording of our conversation. Look.”

  The primary carnage in the room consisted of boxes of reel-to-reel tape. The really valuable ones I had locked up in my room upstairs. The more casual catalog had been alphabetized in rows on the bookshelves that had been built into both sides of the fireplace. Every tape was on the floor, many out of their boxes. I breathed a momentary prayer to the gods of compulsion who had forced me to label every tape as well as every box with catalog numbers, descriptions, exact dates, even times. Putting everything back in order would be relatively short work—unless something was missing.