The Drifter's Wheel

by Phillip DePoy

  “Where’s your gun now, you bastard?” Andrews taunted, sitting on Boy’s chest. Without another word, he balled his fist and slammed it like a pile driver into Boy’s face.

  “God bless!” Boy cursed. “You limey cretin. You broke my nose!”

  “I’m just getting started,” Andrews snarled.

  “Dr. Andrews?” I asked, very politely, as I drew up beside them, panting. “Could I speak with you for a moment?”

  “What?” Andrews had locked eyes with Boy, and it was a fight to the finish.

  “I don’t mind your pummeling this man,” I said, my words absolutely breezy, “but you know how you get. Once you start, it’s hard for you to stop, and if he’s dead—”

  “Get him off of me!” Boy demanded.

  “Where’s your gun?” I asked.

  Boy was silent.

  “Well, Dr. Andrews,” I said, turning my back, “go ahead, then, but I can’t watch. I can’t take that much blood.”

  “It’s in my right pocket!” Boy called out. “Right pocket.”

  Andrews rummaged for it, found it, and tossed it in my direction. I didn’t catch it, and had to forage on the ground in the leaves for a moment.

  “I’ll take this back to Hovis.” I grabbed it. “It is his.”

  “Yes,” Boy admitted.

  “Wait!” I stood bolt upright. “I gave this back to him tonight—or he took it. You didn’t do anything to Hovis, did you? Because if you did—”

  “Me?” Boy whined. “Why would I do anything to Hovis Daniels? Enough’s been done to him already. He took off.” For some reason, I believed him.

  “All right.” I sighed. “Now. Dr. Andrews is going to continue to sit on you while I trudge back up the hill and fetch the sheriff. It may take a while, as I believe I have permanently compromised my lungs by chasing you down the hill.”

  “Not necessary,” Andrews told me, and nodded upward, in the direction of the Jackson place.

  I turned. Several flashlights were wending their way toward us.

  “I’m not a moron,” Andrews said to Boy. “Before I gave chase, I hollered up into that shack for Skidmore and his cohorts to join us.”

  “Nice work,” I beamed. “I don’t know if I would have made it back up there before sunrise.”

  “God damn it!” Boy exploded. “Everything happens to me.”

  “Let’s wait for Sheriff Needle,” I offered politely, “before we discuss just what ‘everything’ means in that sentence, shall we?”

  Boy moaned. It was his only answer, but it was a sound wrenched up from the center of his black heart.

  Twenty-nine

  Moments later Skidmore, Melissa, and Crawdad were sliding on dead leaves descending the hill toward us. Skid managed a spot beside me; Melissa stood back and drew her pistol. Crawdad came close to the two men on the ground.

  “Good,” I announced. “You’re probably wondering why I called this meeting.”

  Crawdad laughed.

  Skidmore’s neck snapped in Crawdad’s direction. “Go put your handcuffs on the suspect, would you?”

  Crawdad moved immediately, but Andrews refused to get up.

  “I’m not moving.” Andrews stared up at Crawdad. “This guy is slippery, and we can’t chase him any more tonight. Dr. Devilin is old for his age, and he wouldn’t make it.”

  “He needs to exercise more,” Crawdad suggested.

  “Look—” Skid flared.

  “Let me tell you what I’ve pieced together,” I said quickly, “and Boy Jackson can correct me when I’m wrong. When that’s done, Andrews will get up, and we’ll walk on down to my house for some apple brandy. I’ll give my keys to Crawdad, and he can bring my truck around—if he wouldn’t mind.”

  “Happy to.” Crawdad’s grin was vibrant even in the moonlight.

  “Boy Jackson and his brother, Son, have been raised for years on stories of the lost Jackson gold mine,” I began. “There is no gold mine!” Skid interrupted.

  “I know,” I told him, attempting to soothe him. “This will take a lot longer if you interrupt.”

  “Why can’t we take him back to the jailhouse and book him while you’re telling your little story?” Skid asked tersely.

  “Because I don’t want to go back to your jailhouse again tonight,” I snapped. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m grouchy, and I was supposed to meet Lucinda for dinner. I haven’t even called her. She’ll be mad at me. I’m going to tell you what I know, and then you can do whatever it is you do.”

  I’d made my little speech with such force that everyone else nodded agreeably—even Boy.

  “The psychology goes like this,” I continued. “Boy was the oldest, but Son was the favorite.”

  “How on earth would you know that?” Andrews asked.

  “A hundred reasons. Because ‘Boy’ is a de facto and merely descriptive name, whereas ‘Son’ is a possessive and affectionate name.” I glared down at Boy. “I’m right. There’s more to it, but I’m right about that.”

  Boy nodded.

  “So when it came time for their father to pass on his inheritance,” I told Skidmore, “a part of that inheritance was the mythology of the lost gold.”

  “Jackson fathers have told Jackson sons about the gold mine,” Boy added, his voice pitiable, “for generations—since the middle 1800s.”

  “When they came of age,” I guessed, “their father told Son about the gold instead of Boy—and told him how to get it, or how he thought it could be had. But Son didn’t care, or didn’t believe the stories. Son joined the army as a way out of the mountains.”

  “No!” Boy corrected with great vehemence. “My brother joined the army because he knew that our dad would like it. I joined up, too, but Dad was only proud of Son—with apologies to Freud and, I suppose, Oedipus.”

  “You both joined the army?” Andrews was baffled.

  “He joined for honor,” Boy growled. “I joined because I thought that the army would be a good place to get at my brother. I could talk to him, find out about my inheritance. Not to mention: Lots of things can happen in combat.”

  “You saw combat?” Andrews was also fascinated.

  “We requested it.” Boy closed his eyes. “Lots of things can happen in combat.”

  “Where?” Andrews asked.

  Boy opened his eyes and looked at me imploringly. “Can you get this oaf away from me? It’s humiliating explaining my life trauma with a large blond man sitting on top of me.”

  I could see his point.

  “Andrews,” I announced, “please let Crawdad put handcuffs on Boy Jackson and come over here, would you?”

  Andrews didn’t move. “Can I at least hit him a few more times?”

  “Fine by me,” Skid said, to no one in particular. “Seriously.” Boy looked directly at Andrews. “Get up.” Andrews sighed heavily, but stood.

  Crawdad moved immediately to put handcuffs on Boy’s wrists. “Let’s do his ankles, too,” Melissa suggested. “Just in case. He is a slippery one.”

  She tossed her cuffs. Crawdad caught them with one hand, barely looking—even in shaded moonlight. He pulled another pair of cuffs from his own belt, locked them together with the ones Melissa had given him, and then attached the free cuffs to Boy’s ankles. He was hobbled.

  Boy rolled onto his side, sat up, looked around at his congregation, and nodded his head.

  “Well,” he wheezed, “I really gave it the old … what they used to call the old college try. But you’ve got me now. Where should I begin?”

  Andrews folded his arms. “First of all, I don’t even believe you’re a Jackson. I’ve met several in the past few days. Your diction and demeanor don’t remotely resemble anyone else’s I’ve encountered—to say nothing of your vocabulary.”

  Of all things, that broke Boy Jackson. His face clouded pitiably. I could see a wave of despair wash over him. His shoulders sank and his eyes welled. To make matters worse, I knew what he was about to say—I could feel it in my cells.<
br />
  “I know.” The sound of his voice could have made an angel weep. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be smart in a cabin at the top of this mountain? What it’s like to have brains in a school that prizes football scores and doesn’t even notice test scores? An ability to lift big rocks was the clincher in the selection of the star student in our high school. My father thought of me as a freak of nature. He had no idea what to do with a boy who wanted to read instead of hunt, talk instead of drink. Son, on the other hand, was everything a Jackson should be: bold but polite, dumb as a stick of butter. When we went to join up, he had trouble spelling ‘army.’”

  “No.” Andrews deliberately interrupted Boy’s near-weeping confession. “I don’t give a damn about your psychological motivation—especially since I think you’re making it up to glean sympathy from Dr. Devilin, whose life story you could be telling. Shove all of that, and I mean shove it as hard as you possibly can. I want to know about the murder and the gold mine. That’s the plot. Screw the Freudian digression.”

  Boy’s head snapped upward as if he’d been slapped.

  I took a breath to speak in Boy’s defense, and Andrews shot me a look that momentarily prevented me from exhaling.

  “All right, then.” Boy shifted his body, sitting more upright. “The facts are these. Son and I are deserters from the army. I spent a moment or two in an army hospital as what is still sometimes called a Section Eight, not mentally competent to serve. Son visited me, and I escaped, taking him with me. He barely knew what time it was, let alone what we were doing. I told him we were on a mission, a special mission. We made it to Atlanta, recently. Do you want to hear those details?”

  “God!” Andrews shrieked.

  “Why were you in the hospital?” Crawdad asked softly.

  “Well,” Boy answered, a sickening grin growing in his face, “someone had it in for Son. Someone had fragged his digs in combat, and there was an incident of friendly fire that almost killed him. He was scared. Someone said I did it. Someone who, incidentally, didn’t make it out of a firefight, so I probably would have gotten off.”

  “I see.” Crawdad didn’t realize it, but he’d taken a small step back, away from Boy.

  “We came back up here with a plan,” Boy continued. “My plan, of course. Son was too stupid to build a plan for coming in out of the rain.”

  “It involved the gold mine,” Andrews prompted impatiently.

  “It did.” Boy’s grin reached monstrous proportions. “Son had decided to tell me about the gold mine, because he was afraid. I’d convinced him that he would die without passing on the secret. He only knew it was on the Jackson property somewhere. The rest was up to me.”

  “Son knew one other fact,” I corrected. “He knew that Mr. Jackson and Hovis Daniels were drinking partners.”

  “Yes, that was part of our father’s secret.” Boy seemed astonished. “How did you know?”

  “A guess.” I tried not to look into his eyes. “It’s not something you would have been interested in, since it involved the family business. You were not, as you hinted, interested in the family business.”

  “Any moron can crush an apple and let it rot,” Boy responded.

  “So your first visit, once you were back here in the mountains, was to Hovis.” I stared up at the moon.

  “It was. Son waited outside in the cold because I told him he’d give us away. He would have, too. He knew he was stupid.”

  “And Hovis wove a spell,” Andrews said slowly. “He can do that; he did it to me.”

  “It was amazing.” Boy lit up, agreeing. “Hovis Daniels is a genius storyteller. When he gets going, you’re not listening anymore, you’re transported. I wanted him to talk all night. He told me about the Civil War and World War II and all the Jackson troubles—God!”

  “And you remembered—or partially remembered—most of what he’d told you,” I interrupted, “to use on me.”

  “Yes, but you have to see the point of what I’m … what I’m getting at.”

  His eyes bored into my skull.

  “Brothers in the Jackson family,” I admitted, still avoiding eye contact, “do seem to have been somewhat at odds for the past several generations. You’ve certainly bought into that, if that’s what you mean.”

  “At odds?” he snapped. “We’ve killed each other like snakes and rats. Damn. You don’t get it. I am all of those brothers. I am the genetic property of those men. I am the reincarnation of every murderer in the family. I am doing my best to fulfill my—”

  “Stop!” Andrews commanded. “I’m stopping you before you get all wound up in another poetic departure from the point. Get to the murder and the gold! Christ!”

  Boy laughed out loud. “Well. Aside from the great family history, I learned from Hovis that only two other people around here might know something about the location of the gold mine.”

  “Lucinda Foxe,” I interrupted, “because she was the last person to see old Mr. Jackson alive—he might have offered her some sort of deathbed information. And me, because I tape-recorded him talking about all sorts of things. You thought he might have, at the very least, given some clues as to the location of the mine on my tapes.”

  “But you called the sheriff before I could lull you into giving them to me,” Boy said, “so I had to come back and steal them.”

  “We thought you were looking for your own tape,” Melissa told him, shaking her head.

  “My fault,” I confessed. “But the facts are that Hovis told you nothing about the mine, Lucinda didn’t know anything, and you left my place on Monday night without Mr. Jackson’s tapes. So what happened?”

  “Son wanted to go home,” Boy answered. “He’d had enough. He kept trying to tell me there was no gold, that it was just a story—the moron. We had an argument about it. One last argument in a long line. I lost my temper and I killed him; killed him good. I realized while I was doing it, in fact, that I’d really been looking forward to it. I wish I could convey how absolutely great it was to watch him die—with that stupid expression on his face. He had no idea what was happening to him. I could have carved a better man out of a banana.”

  “And the rest of this,” Skidmore butted in, “was smoke and mirrors, based on the stories you’d gotten from Hovis. You’ve got a good memory. You were deliberately going on about being Truck Jackson or someone else to keep us off guard—”

  “To weird us out,” Andrews suggested.

  “Or to set up an insanity plea,” I said, finally looking him in the eye, “in the event that you got caught.”

  Skidmore and Melissa nodded together, realizing that everything that Boy had said could confirm a psychological defense strategy at his trial.

  “You got that from Hovis, too,” I guessed.

  “You really are batting a thousand,” Boy said, genuine admiration in his voice.

  “Hovis has been ill-treated by life,” I responded, “but he’s also learned that when times get really tough, a free place to stay with three meals and a nice warm bed can be had for the price of a bit of his sanity—something he doesn’t care that much about in the first place. Or at least not since his wife died.”

  “Correct on all counts, I believe.” Boy nodded. “Getting thrown into the state hospital was like a spa vacation to Hovis. Check and see, but I believe most of his incarcerations there have been during the winter months.”

  “Wait,” Andrews interrupted again. “You had several contingencies, I’m realizing. You stole Hovis’s pistol, and you killed your brother right outside Hovis’s house. You intended to frame him for the murder.”

  “It worked, too.” Boy’s smile was now threatening to crack his skull—it was a terrifying expression. “For a while. It would have worked better, but I didn’t have a chance to move the body closer to Hovis’s hovel. I was going to, but Fate had a better plan. I saw Hovis—and someone else—emerge from the side of the mountain in the moonlight that night. Out of nowhere. I thought for a second I was hallucinati
ng. I threw myself to the ground. They didn’t see me. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when I found the cave which I believe is the lost Jackson gold mine—the one that’s crowned at the other end with the shack of Hovis Daniels.”

  “ That’s how you found it,” I whispered, nearly to myself. “Hovis didn’t give it away.”

  “But, then, what was all this changing clothes with the dead man to make everyone think that you were dead?” Andrews asked, almost to himself. “You did that twice.”

  “I’ve had enough,” Skidmore said suddenly. “And I’m getting a chill. Let’s have this man on his feet and take him into the office, hear?”

  Melissa and Crawdad moved instantly.

  “No,” Andrews protested, “there’s a lot more to be said here.”

  “Such as?” Melissa sighed.

  “What was he thinking when he changed clothes with the dead man? Who was Hovis with on Monday night? A million things. I’d like a much better explanation of these wild identity impersonations.”

  “Don’t care and don’t care,” Skid said, obviously tired. “He confessed to the murder in the presence of witnesses, and he’s already set up a possible defense to it. My work is done. I don’t have an idea what you think your work here is.”

  Crawdad and Melissa had Boy on his feet and began to move him up the hill toward the cars. It was going to take a while, moving the way Boy had to with his feet cuffed together.

  “Dr. Devilin,” Boy said softly, “could you come here for a moment?”

  I looked at Skid. He shrugged.

  I took the few steps to Boy’s side cautiously. He inclined his head ever so slightly toward my ear and whispered several sentences. “What?” I couldn’t hear him properly.

  “Okay,” Skidmore complained, “that’s enough. Take him up the hill.”

  “What did he tell you?” Andrews asked me. “I’m not sure.” I stared at Boy’s back.

  “I’m saying that’s enough for one night!” Skid declared, a bit too loudly.

  “But—” Andrews began.

  “Okay, but no kidding,” I said to Skidmore, “can I give my keys to Crawdad and have him bring my truck over to the house?”