AHMM, Jan-Feb 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  And now, Scotty McKey, who'd saved my life, was lying on a high, narrow bed. His eyes, yellowed and dulled, were open wide and staring at me. His hair had gone gray and sparse, his dark skin had become patchy white, and his body shrunken.

  He lifted a thin arm and gave me a wave as I approached, trying to keep the shock out of my face.

  "Hey, buddy!” he said.

  "Hey, Scotty,” I replied, taking his slightly trembling hand to shake. “It's good to see you."

  "Good to see you too,” he told me.

  I put myself on the edge of the bed next to him.

  He shook his head at me. “Can't believe you're still in."

  "What else would I do?"

  "Retire, for gosh sake. You got way more than twenty years in by now."

  "Way more,” I agreed.

  "Lookin’ at thirty?"

  I shrugged.

  He sighed. “I would'a never stayed in,” he told me, but he didn't explain why.

  A sharp stab of pain struck him suddenly, his body stiffened, sweat stood out on his forehead, his teeth clenched.

  "Damn,” he said, injecting himself. “Be okay in a minute."

  And a minute later the Demerol hit and cleared the sharp creases that furrowed his face. Then he got to the point of my being there.

  "Reason I wanted to see you,” he explained. “A buddy of mine's gone missing."

  "Oh?"

  "Name's Steensen. Ralph Steensen. He was here himself up till about a year ago."

  "He on wheels too?"

  "No, but he had a screw or two loose. We called him Crash.” He smiled. “I know him from Nam. He was a chopper pilot too."

  "Uh-huh."

  He shrugged. “Anyway, like me, he had no family, and since Nam, he's mostly just drifted around, but he'd always have some trouble and end up in one hospital or another. He was here, oh, about five years, I guess, before he left. He didn't want to go, but they closed the nut wing here, so he was history."

  "Uh-huh."

  "The VA had a place for him at this new hospital in Atlanta, but Crash didn't want that, so he just checked out and headed for the swamps. Ended up in this old cabin, outside a place called Polecat Springs, just south of Beauford."

  "That's down near the coast."

  "Not too far."

  "But, you say he's gone missing?"

  "Yeah."

  He took some envelopes from the nightstand by his bed and showed me. They were addressed to a P.O. box, and had been returned to him with a no forwarding order on file label attached.

  "He wrote me a couple of times,” Scotty continued. “Said he was doing good. Liked the swamps, liked living near the river. Liked being off by himself. Said he didn't feel like no nutcase anymore cause there weren't anybody around to make him feel like a nutcase.” He waved the envelopes at me. “Then the letters started coming back."

  "Those are almost a year old, Scotty."

  "I know,” he agreed.

  "Maybe he's in some other hospital."

  "Not a VA Hospital, ‘cause I had the Red Cross check for me, and the VA stopped sending him his checks ‘cause they started getting returned too."

  "Maybe he just started drifting again, Scotty."

  "Maybe."

  "Or maybe..."

  "Yeah,” he nodded. “Maybe, but I gotta know."

  Another shock of pain went through him, but he laid off the Demerol this time and just stood it.

  "I take too much of this stuff now,” he told me through gritted teeth. “It won't do me much good later when it's bad."

  I didn't ask him how good he thought it was now. I just sat there and watched him hurt.

  It was longer than a minute this time.

  Finally, he relaxed enough to continue.

  "Thing is,” he told me in a whispery voice, “I—need to let him know. About my—about me.” He smiled. “About a year and a half ago—I don't know when it was exactly—this insurance guy comes around here and offers us some term life insurance. We had to take a physical, and it wasn't exactly cheap, but it isn't as if guys like us here get a chance at life insurance every day, so I bought a policy, and so did Ralph. It was only for twenty-five thousand, but what the hell, you know?” He shrugged. “We named each other as beneficiaries."

  "I see."

  "So I—you know."

  "I know."

  "So he can collect."

  "I get it, Scotty."

  "I mean—maybe—whatever his problem is now, he could use the cash, you know?"

  "Did you try the local cops?” I said.

  "No,” he replied. “Crash and cops mix like fire and gunpowder. I don't want to cause him any grief, you know? I mean, I want you to find him—but try and keep the cops out of it, okay?"

  Right, I thought.

  He pulled a folded map from the nightstand, opened it on his chest, and pointed. “Cabin's not on any road. But it's right here, by this waterway."

  "You know this place?"

  "He told me about it."

  From the nightstand he handed me up an old Polaroid snapshot, saying, “That's him. That's Crash."

  I looked and saw a wild-eyed, redhaired, full-bearded, middle-aged man, sitting on the front step of tiny, gray-boarded cabin, and looking cross-eyed into the camera.

  "He sent me that last year sometime."

  I nodded.

  He nodded too, then smiled weakly. “They say I got six good months left, but the good part hasn't kicked in yet."

  Right.

  I put the map and the picture away and said, “Anything else I can do for you, Scotty?"

  He shook his head and grinned. “You find Crash,” he told me, “you've done a real job."

  Which I began to get on with almost immediately, driving back to Fort Bragg, packing a bag, and then pointing the Explorer north and east on U.S. 64 to Polecat Springs.

  Driving in a lashing rain that dogged me most of the way—a prelude, the radio informed me, to a hurricane named Amanda, which was just then raising hell off the Georgia coast. Not a long trip, but the weather dragged it out, so that I had a lot of time to think.

  About friendships, their causes and obligations.

  There was not a lot I wouldn't do for Scotty McKey, including wild-goose chasing in the storm of the century. But I'd somehow neglected knowing where he'd been the past two years, which left me feeling rather sloppy.

  And I didn't like the feeling.

  I got to Tarboro—north of where Polecat Springs showed on my map—around eight o'clock, too tired to do anything more than find a Motel 6, get a burger and fries for dinner, and get to bed.

  I spent a lousy night of on-again, off-again sleep, full of cold-sweat dreams that left me when I woke at seven the next morning about as tired as I'd been to begin with.

  And with that wild-goose-chase frame of mind I couldn't shake.

  Men like Crash Steensen, vets with “problems” and no family, or even with family, had a tendency to disappear, and there was no finding them no matter how motivated the search.

  I wanted to find him, really wanted to, because Scotty McKey had never before asked me for anything, but the gone-for-good feeling I had about Steensen was running strong, and it felt like I was just going through the motions. Not the best frame of mind to start a search, but at least being conscious of it, I'd stay with it to the end.

  So, feeling hopeless but determined, I hauled myself out of bed, got directions from the desk clerk, and put the Explorer on the road again, southwest.

  To Polecat Springs, about twenty minutes from Tarboro, where I arrived in another downpour. I drove slowly through the tiny village of modest wood-frame homes, looking for the post office, which turned out to be a counter in the corner of the Polecat Springs General Store and Tattoo Emporium.

  I stopped and got directions from the postmistress—a middle-aged woman, wearing jeans and a tube top, and sporting a variety of wildlife body art over her shoulders and chest and a flaming-red head of curly hair.


  And she remembered Crash.

  "Crazy-looking guy, sure,” she said. “Come in here couple times last year."

  "You haven't seen him since?” I asked.

  "Nah. Not since way last fall,” she told me. “Had a box, and came in to pick up his government check a few times, then—whoosh—never came back. Had to return the last couple checks that came for him and some other mail, ‘cause he didn't pay the rental on the box."

  "No forwarding address, then."

  She dug out a ledger from under the counter, flipped a couple of pages, and said, “No forwarding or residence address. Box rental paid through November last year, but I've got a note here that I returned his November and December's VA checks, so the last I saw of him was probably October sometime."

  I nodded, then showed her the map Scotty had given me, which she studied for a moment.

  "Well, that's Fort Allen Road, anyway,” she said. “Takes you right past the springs."

  "The springs?"

  She rolled her eyes. “Duh—like Polecat Springs?"

  "Oh."

  "Can't miss it, you going up that way."

  I pointed to the spot where the cabin was indicated on the shore of the Tar River. “How about this place here?"

  "Oh, that's swampland, way past the springs, right along Nasty Creek."

  "Nasty Creek?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Polecat Springs?"

  "Yup."

  "Sounds inviting."

  "I wouldn't know,” she told me. “I never get out that way.” She smiled at me and added, “There's nothing out there."

  I smiled back at her. “Probably something."

  "Like what?"

  I nodded. “Well, thanks,” I told her, and started out.

  "Got a special this week on dirty birds,” she said.

  I looked back. “Dirty birds?"

  She smiled broadly and pointed to her neck and the ring of pigeons she wore there, like a necklace.

  I waved no thanks and said, “I'm saving my neck for dirty mice."

  "Mice?” she said, sticking the tip of her tongue out at the corner of her mouth in a that-makes-me-sick way. “How weird is that?"

  Right.

  Sometimes, irony is as lost as a vegetarian in a steakhouse.

  I found Fort Allen Road easily enough—a winding, narrow ribbon of asphalt that paralleled the river for a few miles, then crossed a narrow, shaky-looking bridge, looped south for a few miles more, then forked.

  I flipped a mental coin and went left about two hundred yards, where the road turned suddenly unpaved, rutted, and semi- overgrown, and after a few bumpy miles it finally ended at the edge of a gloomy-looking swamp.

  Where a handmade sign informed the interested, polecat springs—one mile—hold your nose.

  And though I wasn't terribly interested, I put on a poncho, got out, found a semi-dry trail, and hiked into the swamp, which was thickly treed and unusually uneven with boggy mounds. It seemed to go on forever.

  After about a twenty-minute walk, I came to a small flowing stream I knew was Nasty Creek. It flowed from a steamy, bubbling pond that I knew also was Polecat Springs.

  I knew because the sulfuric emanation produced the deadliest smell I've ever encountered, and nose-holding was, indeed, well recommended.

  Following the creek south a few hundred yards more, I came to the point where it flowed into the Tar, where I stopped and scanned the area with my binoculars.

  I could see nothing of any cabin, though this was where my map showed it to be. After a few minutes, I gave it up and turned back to go upstream—and found it.

  The cabin was about a hundred feet from where I stood, buried in a cluster of mangrove and resting on a gnarl of roots. I got my feet wet just hiking in.

  It was a small thing, more of a hut than a cabin, with walls of weather-grayed planks, a slanted sheet metal roof, and a rusted pipe for a chimney. A boarded-up window in front had the remains of a bird's nest in it, and the door seemed to hang in its frame a bit crookedly.

  As I got close, that unmistakable sense of “nobody's home” came through loud and clear, but when I got to the door, I gave it a good hard knock anyway, which scared a squirrel that'd been on the roof into leaping onto a tree branch right over my head, and also opened the door a little because it hadn't actually been closed. I gave it a slight push and took a step inside, smelling the odor of rotting wood that had me stepping very gingerly over the deep-sagging plank floor.

  The cabin was one room, roughly twenty by twenty, and the pine wood ceiling had a sag in the middle, giving the place a very cramped look. There was a cot in one corner with a rolled sleeping bag under it, and an overturned kerosene heater in the other corner with a broken flue hanging from the ceiling above it. Against the right wall, just under a broken window, was a rusted sink with a hand pump that was leaning down toward the floor. There was a folding card table and a broken chair in the middle of the room, and the whole place was littered with clothes, cooking utensils, books, papers, other odds and ends, tree leaves, and animal droppings—and everything was drenched and rotting.

  Crash Steensen wasn't home, and hadn't been for a long while.

  Walking carefully over the squishy mess on the floor, I came to where the card table stood, on which was spread a few sodden pages of the sports section of the Raleigh News and Observer for October 12th of the previous year.

  The Yankees had won the World Series.

  Not the sports scoop of the century.

  Looking around myself in the dim light, I saw a pile of rubbish under the cot, so I walked over, squatted down, and poked through it, finding only ... rubbish. But then farther under the cot near the wall was a large gray bag, and I reached and brought it out. I had found Steensen's treasure.

  A Zippo lighter, a pouch of marijuana, some cigarette papers, a few ancient issues of Rolling Stone, and a stained Purple Heart medal, dangling from its case.

  The citation, on onionskin paper, was folded inside, and although the light in the cabin was too poor to make out the whole of the faded text, the name “Steensen, Ralph J., 1st Lt.” was clear enough.

  So I was, at least, in the right place.

  I put the ribbon and citation back in the bag with everything except the grass, which I prudently tossed onto the cot, then stood, looking around myself again.

  "So, where'd you go, Crash?” I asked the dark room.

  There was no reply, only the sound of the creaking floor and the rain thudding on the roof. The wild-goose-chase feeling was running strong in me.

  It was plain that Steensen was long gone, but unless he'd done himself, he didn't seem to have planned on being as long gone as he was, and that, I realized, made my job something that wouldn't have a happy ending.

  And as I started to leave, with a hard call to make to Scotty on my mind, I saw the map.

  Tacked to the wall beside the door was a section of a standard road map, but with markings made on it, and a big X, beside which was the word “cave."

  It was clearly a map of the area I was in, and the marks made on the map were a kind of trail that led south through the swamp, following the east bank of Nasty Creek, but I didn't know what to make of it.

  I didn't know what to make of anything.

  And the whole business was starting to depress me, so I put the map in the bag and hiked back to my truck. I drove back to Tarboro in a harder rain, deciding on the way that despite Scotty's warning, talking to the cops at this point was the best move to make.

  Crowded by ancient trees, the Edgecomb County Sheriff's substation, just south of Tarboro, was one of those new/old buildings—a newer, concrete structure extended back from and around either side of an older Victorian building, complete with broad porch and columns.

  I parked outside, climbed up onto the porch, and went inside, told my story to a uniformed clerk, and was eventually directed to the office of Deputy Sheriff Gerald Matini.

  A short balding man, with a weight
lifter's physique that threatened, in places, to burst through the khaki uniform he wore.

  He looked at Crash's picture after I'd introduced myself, then said, “I know him. Haven't seen him in six, seven months.” He frowned at me. “He wanted?"

  "Not that I know of,” I replied.

  Matini motioned me to a chair beside his desk and we both sat.

  "Steensen's the friend of a friend,” I explained, “and I'm just trying to locate him."

  "Steensen?"

  "Ralph Steensen, yes."

  He frowned at the picture again. “Pretty sure he lived in an old cabin, down past Polecat Springs..."

  "I've been there, and he's not."

  "Hmph."

  "And it doesn't look like he moved out."

  I described the state of the cabin, and watched him do the math.

  "That don't sound good,” he said.

  "I know."

  "Lot of wild country down that way. The swamp and all."

  He gave me a you-fill-in-the-blanks look, that I answered with a nod.

  Matini handed me back Crash's photograph, then leaned back in his chair. “Not a bad guy, as I recall, but a little loosely wrapped."

  "So I've been told."

  He smiled. “Came in here one day, all in a lather about something I couldn't make heads or tails of."

  "Oh?"

  "Something about finding a body somewhere, but he couldn't tell me much that made any sense."

  "When was this?"

  "Like I said, ‘bout six, seven months back,” he shrugged. “But he just didn't make sense, you know? Sounded more like he had a real bad dream. Couldn't tell me where this cave was, except it was somewhere south of Polecat."

  "A cave?"

  He nodded. “I told him to draw me a map, and he got all excited, like I had accused him of lying, and stormed off."

  I dug the map out of Steensen's bag and showed him.

  "Well, this is a map,” Matini said, after studying it. “Maybe he did find a body."

  "Did you follow up on it?"

  He nodded patiently. “I gave Chief Gettis down in Bayette a call about it—that area south of Polecat is beyond the county line—but old Gettis couldn't figure where that cave could be, and there weren't nobody local reported missin', so...” He shrugged.

  I nodded.

  "I'll fax this on down to Chief Gettis; once we're past this hurricane, I'm sure he'll look into it."