South of the Pumphouse

by Les Claypool

  “What about Denise?” asked Ed

  “Denise won’t say shit if there’s no body. She’ll think he chicken-shitted out of town so I wouldn’t find out he fucked her.” Earl examined Ed for a moment, reading his concern. He leaned in closely again and added, “Look, bro. I don’t want to get you in trouble, you havin’ a family and all. If you can’t handle it, I won’t fault you none. But Ed, I know what I’m talkin’ about. We can pull this off easier than you think.”

  “I don’t know, Earl,” Ed said, shaking his head halfheartedly. “That guy was a dick and all, but man, this is bad shit here. This is some BAD shit. I don’t think I can. I mean …”

  “All right, Ed,” Earl responded coolly.

  “Sorry, bro,” said Ed, wincing.

  Earl put his hand on Ed’s shoulder once again. “Don’t even think twice about it, bro. Don’t even think twice.”

  Earl got up, grabbed two beers out of the ice chest, and dug a small brownish duffel bag out from under one of the boat cushions. He handed one beer to Ed, then sat down and cracked the other, taking a big pull.

  He sat pensively for a long moment and then took another pull, emptying the bottle. He reached into the duffel, pulled out a rather large pistol, and stated, “Here’s what I wantcha to do, Ed.”

  Ed, who had been looking out the back of the boat, turned toward Earl and was alarmed at the sight of the weapon. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

  “I can’t go to jail, Ed.”

  “What the fuck are you going to do, Earl?!”

  “I’m gonna blow my head off, bro.”

  “No, wait,” Ed insisted, reaching for the gun.

  Earl held the pistol out away from his brother. “Naw, listen, Ed. Just listen.”

  “Calm down, Earl. Relax,” coaxed Ed, still reaching for the gun.

  “I’m fine, Ed. I’m calm. Just listen.” Earl gently pushed his brother back in his seat. “I blow my head off. You drive the boat in and tell ’em the story. I killed Donny, and in my remorse, I killed myself.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Well, then just call someone on the radio and they’ll come out to you.”

  “Earl, just a second now.”

  “Ed, I can’t go to jail. When you think on it, this is the best way.”

  Ed sat and stared at his brother. He remembered certain qualities in him that, even when they were kids, were already so well defined. Earl was a person of conviction, and when he set his mind to something, his demeanor reflected the determination of a man not to be swayed. Ed recognized this attitude and knew that it was no bluff. His brother had never been a bluffer.

  “I’m not gonna sit here and watch my big brother blow his brains out!”

  Earl leaned forward, looked Ed in the eye, and summed up the whole situation: “Look, it makes sense. I killed my best friend. My wife’s suckin’ cocks in the Rancho men’s toilet … I lost the biggest fish I’m ever gonna catch.” He paused for a moment and then added, “It’s been a bad day, bro.”

  “Look, Earl, manslaughter. You were out of your mind. I’ll testify. They’ll give you six months, max.”

  “No, they’ll put me away for good.”

  “Not you, not a first offender.”

  “I ain’t no first offender, Ed,” Earl said after a moment. “I been in before. Eighteen months.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, it was while you were at college.”

  “Nobody told me.”

  “Well, I don’t know. It’s not something you brag about.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I was in Donny’s old Challenger. Me and him had got drunk out at the Concord Sheridan one Friday night. He couldn’t drive. I shouldn’t’ve either, but I did. Anyways, we got pulled over on Castro Ranch Road cuz he had a headlight out. I was actually driving pretty good at that point. I’d sobered a bit.” Earl paused for no apparent reason and then went on. “But when the cop stepped up to look at the headlight, Donny was fuckin’ around and popped it into gear. Pinned the cop between our bumper and his. Broke his leg. He was pissed, of course. Got me for assault with a deadly weapon and drivin’ while under the influence, plus a couple of other things. Eighteen months seemed like eighteen years, bro. I ain’t goin’ back.” Earl shook his head and looked away. “They do fucked-up things to people in jail.”

  Completely bewildered by what he just heard, Ed asked mechanically, “What happened to Don?”

  “Nothin’,” Earl stated flatly.

  Dumfounded, Ed sat silent for a moment and then asked: “So my choice here is, help dispose of a body and become an accessory to murder or watch my only brother blow his brains out?!”

  “Sorry, Ed. I wish it weren’t like this.”

  Ed leaned forward in his chair and put his hands to the sides of his head. The one and only thing he was sure of was his regret that, at this particular moment, his mind was scattered, swimming with imagery from the psychedelic mushrooms. “Are you sure that nobody will miss that son of a bitch?”

  “I usually don’t even know where he is, and I’m his best friend.”

  “Well, can we just dump him over the side?”

  “The average depth of the bay is somethin’ like nine feet. With all these sturgeon fishermen this time of year and the shrimp and herring boats, we need to get him out to sea.” Earl paused to think. “First off, we ain’t got enough gas to get that far, and second, it’s sloppy as shit outside the ‘Gate’ today.”

  “Any place we can get gas?”

  “No place where they won’t notice a dead body slumped on the deck.”

  “Isn’t it deep over by Angel Island or Alcatraz?”

  “Yeah, but it’s pretty crowded around there too. We’d have to be slick, lots of sailboats and ferryboats and shit. It would only take one of them fuckin’ tourists with binoculars to spot us.”

  “Shit!” Ed barked in frustration. “Why not just dump him somewhere remote? Weight him down. The crabs will get him pretty quick, won’t they?”

  “Hopefully, but there ain’t too many crabs in the bay these days,” mused Earl.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I been tryin’ to tell ya. The bay ain’t what it was when we were kids. I ain’t seen a decent size crab in this part of the bay for a long time. Flounder neither.”

  “Well, flounder won’t help us anyway.”

  Earl had stopped listening to his brother. He was focusing instead on figuring their options.

  Watching Earl sitting there, Ed couldn’t help but feel a tinge of admiration for his big brother’s resolve in the midst of such a dire situation.

  After a few moments more, Earl finally spoke again. “I say we pick up and head over near the Richmond dumps. Nobody fishes by the dumps, and I’d think if there were crabs, they might be around down there. It’s not too deep, but it’s pretty remote.”

  Ed felt completely overwhelmed. In less than an hour, his life had changed radically. He was about to become an accessory to murder. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t sit and watch his brother take his own life.

  “Look,” Earl interrupted the silence, realizing the struggle that Ed was having with the decision, “if anything comes from it, I’ll take the heat and say that the whole thing went down after you left. That Donny showed up after we went in, and he and I got into a fight, and I killed him and dumped him out here. Red will vouch that it was just me and you out here in the boat. So I’ll just say it went down later. But I’m tellin’ you, remember that story about the guy with the knife stuck in his eye? Well, that guy could just as easily have been Don Vowdy. There are a lot of folks out there that wouldn’t mind seein’ him go. The police would be hard pressed to find somebody who didn’t want to kill him at one point or another.”

  Ed looked Earl in the face. His brother still looked gaunt; to any outsider, his face would have been that of an older, more weathered man. But Earl’s eyes, Ed noticed, though they were a bit set back in the skull
, were the same ones he’d come to rely on in his youth. He’d seen those eyes sparkle with glee when Earl had received an orange Schwinn Sting-Ray one Christmas morning. He’d seen them wonder at the sight of many a hog striper or sturgeon caught by their father and uncle. He’d also seen them pointed, stern, and violent when that fat jackass Steve Harvey had told everyone in Mr. Gok’s biology class the bogus story that Ed was gay and that he’d had a hard-on during PE in the locker room shower freshmen year. Earl had made a point to beat Steve’s ass during assembly, in the quad and in front of his own girlfriend, just to send the message that, no matter how odd Ed could be, no one was to fuck with Earl Paxton’s little brother.

  “Okay, bro,” Ed announced after a moment, “let’s just get this over with.”

  Earl’s mouth curled up to as much of a smile as he could muster. He put his hand on Ed’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Easy, now, bro,” he said in a low tone. “We can’t pick up just yet. We got to play it cool till some of these boats clear out. Besides, you never know. They might be able to see us from the shore once we get there. The later, the better. We don’t need some fucker rootin’ through the trash spottin’ us with this mess.” Earl gestured toward the body and then looked at his watch. “Let’s see. It’s almost 1:30. Let’s give it about an hour, then pick up.”

  “What the hell are we supposed to do till then?”

  Earl had already picked up his pole and was untangling his leader. “Keep on fishin’.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ed mumbled under his breath.

  Earl rebaited and recast both poles.

  Death is always awkward, Ed thought to himself.

  Chapter 27

  JOHN DAVIS

  Ed wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there. Earl had pushed Donny’s body toward the center of the boat so that he could take his place in the end seat on the port side. Earl must have been worrying, Ed figured, that anyone within sight of them might think it strange to see him sitting in the middle seat next to Ed—not that anyone was close enough to see. He recalled his youth in El Sobrante, when a group or even just a couple of guys would go to the movies. No one would dare sit next to each other in the theater for fear of being dubbed a fag. The multiplex cinema at Hilltop Mall was always dotted with young men and teens, empty seats between them all. Sometimes large groups of guys would occupy multiple rows with empties between each one. Ed imagined the scene that would have occurred if the entire De Anza High football team had decided to take in a film on an opening weekend, and all the unused seats they would have required. He chuckled at the thought of it, until a voice disturbed his reveries.

  “Hey there, Eddy boy!”

  Ed looked down to see Donny sitting up and looking at him—and then watched as Donny’s face suddenly transformed into the face of Ed’s father.

  “Hey, Pop.”

  “What the hell are you guys up to now?” his father asked with a note of annoyance.

  “Oh man, Pop, this has been a weird day,” Ed answered, shaking his head.

  “Of course it’s a weird day. You eat that LSD crap and your brain turns to shit.”

  “It’s mushrooms, Pop.”

  “Mushrooms, LSD. Hell, it’s all the same crap. Turns your brain to shit. Look at yourself.” His father waved a hand toward him. “You’re all fucked up. I didn’t teach you to do that kind of shit. Where’d you learn that shit anyway? I’ll bet it was that John Davis.” He paused and shook his head. “That little fucker. I knew he was no good. I should have run that little prick out of our house when he first came around.”

  “John Davis? Dad, I haven’t seen John Davis since junior high.”

  “That little fucker. I never did like that little prick.”

  “Honest, Pop, I haven’t even talked to that guy in at least ten or twelve years. I’m all right, Pop. Really.”

  Ed’s father looked at him for a moment and then said, in a much calmer tone, “I heard you got married.”

  “Yep.”

  “You married a black girl, didn’t ya?”

  “Yeah, Pop.”

  His father stared at him long and hard. “I sure hope you know what the hell you’re doin’.”

  Ed wasn’t troubled by his father’s reaction. He was actually surprised that he hadn’t reacted more harshly. Perhaps some of those old jaded viewpoints had faded a bit in his later years. Ed hadn’t really been around to know for himself. It pleased him to think that things may have improved with his dad. Yet, at the same time, it saddened him to think of what his father had missed, not being a part of his grandson’s life. Maybe he would have embraced the notion of grandfatherhood. Perhaps it would have made him more tolerant. People hate to fear, Ed thought, and people fear the unknown. His father had been largely ignorant about most cultures other than his own. By being exposed to the family Ed and Tasha had created, maybe his father would have learned to be more open-minded. Ed had never thought of things this way before. He had just assumed that his father would have shut out him and his loved ones, and he simply wouldn’t have been able to bear that. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Regardless, it was too late now. The thought of what might have been made tears well in his eyes.

  “I’m trying, Pop.”

  “Well, you sure screwed things up here today,” his father snapped.

  “I didn’t really have anything to do with that, Pop.”

  “Of course you did. You’re the one who told Earl to cut the line, ain’t ya?”

  Ed was confused. He had been thinking that his father was referring to what had happened to Donny. “What?”

  Cut the line, you said. Red’s coming,” Ed’s father “recited mockingly. “What the hell was that shit? Hell, you had him. You had HIM. The big one. The biggest,” he emphasized.

  Suddenly, the shrimp voices chimed in once again: THE BIGGEST.

  “See,” Ed’s father said, pointing to the bait bucket.

  Reflecting back on the sight of the massive sturgeon breaking the surface of the water, Ed whispered, “He was the biggest, wasn’t he?”

  “Hell yeah! But he’s gone now. That’s for damn sure,” Ed’s father bellowed. His nose began to flow with blood. “Damn, I wish you guys would get your shit together. I don’t know what the hell to do with you two. I’ll bet it was that John Davis fucker. I should have kicked that little prick out years ago. Never did like that sneaky little bastard.”

  As Ed’s father finished his last sentence, he eased back to his crumpled position on the deck and morphed into Donny.

  Staring at the body, Ed was abruptly called back to reality by the sound of Earl lurching forward and yanking back his pole.

  “Damnit! Missed him.” Earl stood to reel in and check his bait.

  Chapter 28

  THE DUMP

  Earl throttled down and scanned the area. They were still at least a couple of miles from shore, but Ed could smell that old familiar scent. He remembered what it had been like back in the day, with he and his brother helping his father. It had always amazed him how much his father could fit into the back of their old pickup truck when it came time to go to the dump. It had almost been like some sort of contest.

  Ed’s mother would always say, “You’ll never get all of that crap in one load. You’ll have to make at least two trips.”

  “Oh yeah?” Ed’s father would respond, as if challenged. Sure enough, he would manage to get every last bit of weed, old lumber, a broken lawn chair, chunks of concrete, whatever was there, into the back of that truck. Ed recalled side panels fabricated out of old ply with debris piled up way beyond, all cinched down and covered with tarp. It resembled one of those obtuse vehicles from the Dr. Seuss books, as they rumbled and wobbled down the road toward the Richmond Sanitary Landfill: the dump.

  “Whatcha think, Ed?” Earl asked, still scanning.

  “Yeah, looks good,” Ed said, noting to himself the magnificent bronze tint that arose on the horizon as the sinking sun reflected off the mounds of debris in the distance.
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  Earl shut the motor down and let the boat drift. “Now, let’s think this through. We need to get his clothes off so there’s nothin’ to identify.”

  The words gave Ed a chill. “Oh man.”

  “C’mon, help me out, Ed,” Earl urged, reaching for the body. They turned Donny over, exposing the bloody pulp of his face.

  “Oh shit!” Ed gagged, as they began to peel off the clothes. “I can’t fucking believe this,” he barked, gagging again. “He stinks!”

  “He must’ve shit himself,” stated Earl, point blank, as he pulled the trousers off.

  “Oh my god.” Ed wretched and then turned his head and dry heaved. Earl continued stripping the body down to its shorts.

  Ed wiped his mouth and took a few deep breaths to compose himself. He looked over the body. He noticed a medium-sized, black-and-white tattoo of Betty Boop on the top of Donny’s right arm. She was wearing nothing but a garter belt, and her giant breasts and small pubic patch were exposed. Ed observed the quality of the image and was somewhat aroused. He reached down to stifle the twitch he felt in his pants.

  “What about that tattoo?” he asked, giving his crotch an adjustment.

  “I was thinkin’ the crabs would take care of that.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Yeah, but what if they don’t? You said yourself there ain’t shit for crabs anymore.”

  Earl stared at the tattoo for a moment and then coolly responded, “Okay.” He reached into the side storage pocket on the starboard side of the boat and pulled out a long knife. Leaning over the body, he started a nice clean filet cut just under the tattoo, working up, flipping it back, and cutting it off. He held up the flesh. “There,” he announced, as droplets of blood ran down the length of Betty Boop.

  “Oh my fucking God, I’m gonna …” Ed was doubled over the side of the boat vomiting before he could finish his statement.

  “You all right, Ed?”

  “Yeah,” he puffed. “I need to sit down.” He plopped into a seat. His face was flushed and sweaty.