“Where? Where? Where the hell is it?”
Bernie darted into a dark corner, flung some life jackets out of the way, and bent over a whole mess of pipes coming and going in every direction.
“Gotta be this,” he said, and started pushing and pulling at some sort of lever. It wouldn’t budge. He grabbed a big wrench, swung hard at the lever, missing it completely, the wrench slipping from his hand and spinning across this little below-deck storeroom or whatever it was and clanging on the floor. A floorboard broke loose and came whipping right back at us. We jumped out of the way, Bernie losing his balance and crashing into the lever, shoulder-first. It shifted. The sound of running water coming from above and all around us died away.
Bernie rose, rubbing his shoulder, head bandage dangling loose and then falling to the deck, where he left it. No blood was flowing anywhere on his head, a nice sight.
“That was easy,” he said.
Which wouldn’t have been my take, but if Bernie said so, then that was that. He picked up the loose floorboard, took it over to the hole in the floor, started to lower it in place, and paused. “What have we here?” he said. He reached in and pulled out a very thick and very short piece of pipe with a big sort of nut at one end, a lot like the one we had in the car, or even exactly the same. He turned to me, his eyes glittering in the way they did when we were about to start getting ours.
“Two miners, Chet,” he said. What had that been all about again? I couldn’t quite bring it back, but the number sounded right.
Bernie brought the other pipe in from the car, set the two pipes side by side on the kitchen counter. By that time, we had all the water mopped up and everything looked ship-shape, as Bernie put it, but wasn’t Little Jazz a sort of ship? Meaning how could it be car-shaped, or tree-shaped, or any other kind of shape? I puzzled over that and then I didn’t. All I knew for sure was that I was Chet-shaped. Good enough for me, amigo.
“Look pretty much identical to me,” Bernie said. “But one’s good and one’s a piece of crap, although that quote is hearsay from Duke, which is like piling crap on crap.”
I smelled no crap in the vicinity, none at all, which was actually kind of unusual. Piles of crap would not be something I’d miss. But I believed in Bernie. Crap had to be just around the corner.
“We’ll put a black M on this one,” Bernie said, taking a couple of felt pens from a jar on the counter, “meaning we found it at Mack’s, and a red R for Ralph on the new one.” He raised the pipes one at a time, peering in them like they were spyglasses, spyglasses being something I knew from our pirate-movie-watching period, which had come after our outer-space-movie period and before one of our many Western-movie periods. Westerns were Bernie’s favorite, and mine, too, on account of—
“Whoa!” Bernie said. He turned the red-marked pipe this way and that, squinting into it from different angles. “Something’s taped in there? Like a . . .” He opened a drawer, took out a long skewer, the kind for doing shrimp on the barbie, and poked around inside the red-marked pipe. After a moment or two, out fell a small square of folded paper with some torn-off tape across the top. “. . . a note?” Bernie’s voice went real quiet.
He sat down at the table, carefully unfolded the small square, ending up with a sheet of paper the same size as what we had in the printer back home—jammed for what Bernie said was the last time and now in pieces in the recycling bin, but forget that last part. Standing beside Bernie, I could make out markings on the page; other than that, I had nothing to contribute.
“X cubed plus 314Y to the . . . and all in a square bracket that . . . forgotten what the sideways squiggly thing . . .” His voice trailed off. “Math, big guy,” Bernie said. “Math, math everywhere and not a drop to drink,” he added, losing me completely. “Who’s good at math?” Or something like that: in my already completely lost state I maybe wasn’t paying the closest attention.
Meanwhile, Bernie had pulled out his phone, was tapping at the keys. “No service?” He gave the phone a little smack. Bernie was only human—only human being one of my favorite human expressions—and humans had a habit of smacking their machines around. The machines never smacked them back. I’d seen some very tough guys who did the same thing, just taking it and taking it until their moment came around.
We got in the car and drove down one rutted road and up another, Bernie checking the phone screen from time to time. “Here we go,” he said, pulling over. A blob of bird crap fell from the sky and landed on the hood. Crap: just around the corner, making Bernie right again.
“Hey, Prof,” he said. “Bernie Little here.”
Prof ! We had lots of experts for this and that—Otis DeWayne when it came to weapons, for example—and Prof down at Valley College was our money expert. I didn’t get to see Prof enough. He had a big round belly that was always making interesting sounds and also jiggled when he laughed, which was often, but his eyes were smart and watchful; kind of like Cleotis’s, which might have come up already.
Prof’s voice sounded through the speakers. “Hi, Bernie. I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“What about?”
“That router company I recommended in March,” Prof said. “Had a nice run-up, but now it’s time to cash out and take your profits.”
“Uh,” Bernie said, “I never pulled the trigger on that.”
“No? Next you’ll be telling me you took a flyer on that tequila start-up instead.”
Bernie said nothing. The tequila start-up? Something about making tequila from this special weed that grew on landfills? I kind of remembered a woman from the company coming over to the house and giving Bernie a taste.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” Prof said, which couldn’t be truer in my experience. Horses were prima donnas and making them do just about anything was impossible. “Any point in giving you another tip, Bernie?”
“Not at the moment,” Bernie said. “How’s your math?”
“Adequate for my purposes,” said Prof.
“I’ve got a bunch of equations here—mind taking a look at them?”
“They don’t teach math at West Point?”
“They do,” Bernie said, “but I don’t seem to have retained it.”
“That’s because your life is overbalanced into the physical world. Proust hardly ever left his cork-lined bedroom.”
Sounded pretty suspicious to me. I made what Bernie calls a mental note. Proust: possible perp, an orange jumpsuit most likely in his future.
“Can you just take down these numbers?” Bernie said.
“I’ll have to go over to the desk.” Then came a grunt, which would be Prof getting off the couch in his office, a very comfortable leather couch I’d tried out once myself. “Okay, shoot.”
Bernie held the sheet of paper up to the light and started reading to Prof. So nice to hear Bernie’s voice. As for whatever he was actually saying, you tell me.
“I’ll get back to you,” Prof said, just as my eyelids were getting heavy.
I had a quick nap, one of my very quickest, and then we were pulling up to the dock. Another car was waiting. The door opened and Vannah jumped out. She came running over, kind of stumbling in her high heels, like she might topple over any second.
“You bastard!” she yelled. “You’re the one who found him and you didn’t even tell me! I had to hear it from some goddamn coldblooded cop.”
“Um, sorry,” Bernie said. “I got caught up and—” He cut himself off. “My apologies,” he said. “And I’m sorry for the loss of your brother.”
She gazed at Bernie, wobbling back and forth a bit, breathing deeply. Vannah wore a very short skirt and a very little top. Bernie did the best job I’d ever seen him do of keeping his gaze on a mostly naked woman’s face.
“And now Lord’s missing, too?” Vannah said.
“I’m afraid so,” Bernie said.
Her eyes misted over. Was she going to burst into tears? That often came next, but from Vannah? I
kind of doubted it, on account of her face, beautiful, yes, but also kind of tough from certain angles, and—
Vannah burst into tears. She threw herself into Bernie’s arms. “I’m scared, so scared.”
Bernie patted her back. “Now, now,” he said, and added, “there, there.”
She buried her face on his shoulder, which muffled her crying and also her voice. “Let me stay here with you, oh don’t say no.” Was that what she said? I couldn’t be absolutely sure.
“Ah, um, well . . .” said Bernie. And then I was.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sometimes a kind of tension springs up between a man and a woman. It’s a snap to pick up, since right away—actually even before—they both start smelling different. I began picking up the tension during dinner that night—tuna sandwiches for them, kibble for me—and it got stronger around bedtime. For sleeping quarters on Little Jazz we had a real bed in the bedroom section toward the bow, and a padded bench that turned into a bed in the living room part. After some back-and-forth, Bernie got Vannah to sleep in the bedroom, and he took the padded bench.
“A gentleman, huh?” she said. “Haven’t run into many of them.” A gentleman was a dude who wore a coat and tie, and Bernie was wearing a Hawaiian shirt that night—the one with the coconuts-with-straws-sticking-out-of-them pattern—so I didn’t quite catch Vannah’s drift. Plus she hadn’t seen many dudes in coat and ties? They’re all over downtown in the daytime.
I started the night on the floor right next to the padded bench, moved out onto the stern deck and watched the moon for a while, returned to my spot near the padded bench. Bernie was muttering a bit, not having one of his best sleeps. “On the other hand,” he said, and later, “if only,” both bad signs. I wriggled around, got even more comfortable than I already was, and readied myself for some nice dreams, maybe chasing fat javelinas in the canyon behind our place on Mesquite Road or exploring the inside of Iggy’s house with Iggy beside me, an adventure that had really happened once in waking life, a fun day to the max and nothing to feel bad about ever since old Mr. Parsons told Bernie it had nothing to do with Mrs. Parsons ending up back in the hospital. But in that fuzzy time when my eyes were closed but dreams hadn’t quite arrived, I heard light, barefooted steps approaching.
My eyes opened but I already knew who it was. Vannah moved through a thin stream of moonlight flowing through one of those little round windows. She wore a T-shirt and that was it, a T-shirt you couldn’t call longish. Normally, I wouldn’t let anyone near Bernie while he slept, so why wasn’t I on my feet, getting between them, maybe throwing in a growl or two? No clue! No clue excepting her hands were empty and just from the way she moved, I knew she meant Bernie no harm. I lay stretched out and motionless on the floor, actually incapable of movement myself, as though I was asleep, and I sort of did feel asleep, but with open eyes.
Vannah stood over the bed. Moonlight shone on her face. She looked a lot older by moonlight, at least to me. Bernie’s bare shoulder was sticking up out of the covers. The moonlight caught his shoulder, too, making it like stone. But Bernie wasn’t stone, was a flesh-and-blood man, his strong chest rising and falling as he breathed. Vannah reached for his shoulder, ran her hand along it, pulled back the covers, swung her leg up on the bed.
Bernie’s eyes snapped open. “Vannah?” he said, sitting up real fast, the way Bernie could move if he had to. “What’s going on?”
“Take a wild guess,” she said. She laughed a low, gurgly laugh. “The wilder the better.” She lowered her face to his. Bernie’s mouth opened and closed, no sound coming out. Their lips were just about touching. At that moment, his gaze shifted and went to me, lying on the floor. He seemed to be looking me right in the eyes. I did the same thing to him, no seeming about it. His expression changed, hard to explain how, almost like he’d given himself a good shake. He held up his hand to Vannah.
“No,” he said.
“No what?” she said. “No wildness? Strictly vanilla?”
Vanilla? This was all about ice cream? Ice cream in general I can take or leave, but vanilla I’d just leave. The possibility wasn’t even going to arise since there was no vanilla on the boat, the smell being impossible to miss. So: I was actually a bit lost.
Bernie put his hand on Vannah’s arm, didn’t exactly push her, more like held her off.
“I appreciate the ah, um,” he said. “But it’s not a good idea.”
“How do you know?” Vannah said. “We haven’t gotten to the ah, um yet.”
Yes, this was impossible to follow. I closed my eyes.
“I have a girlfriend,” Bernie said.
“You do?”
“I tried to tell you on the phone. We got cut off.”
“How about pretending you don’t,” Vannah said, “and I’ll do some pretending of my own? I can keep a secret, and I’m sure you can, too.”
“Yeah,” Bernie said, “but I couldn’t keep it from myself.”
There was a silence, a still moment or two, and then all that tension I’d been feeling in the boat started fading fast. There was no more talk. Vannah’s bare footsteps went padding back to the bedroom. Everybody settled down for a nice sleep. Bernie says that sleep knits up torn sleeves, or something like that, although none of us on Little Jazz had on any sort of sleeves at the moment. I wasn’t even wearing my collar! I thought about my collar for a while. Then I rose and took a little turn on the stern deck, sticking my nose over the side and sniffing the bayou: no trace of Iko. Not that I was afraid of Iko, not in the slightest. Don’t think that for a moment. I returned to my spot near Bernie and plunged right into dreamland.
Bacon! There are smells in dreams, at least the way we dream them in the nation within. Sometimes I have dreams that are smells and smells only. Does that happen to you? I kind of doubt it, no offense.
Bacon! The dream smell of bacon got so strong that my mouth began to water, and when my mouth waters I can’t keep my eyes closed. I opened them—and what was this? Bacon!
Yes, bacon of the nondream type, meaning you could eat it. In passing, I noticed other early morning details: Bernie at the kitchen table, checking out those two thick pipes again, a cup of steaming coffee at his elbow; Vannah at the little stove, wearing a tiny bikini, and frying up a gently hissing pan of—BACON. The bacon part was the main event, of course, not part of the noticed-in-passing details, all of which had already slipped my mind. Beside that lovely hissing, so full of promise, there was also the sound of Vannah whistling to herself—and she was good at it. This was all nice and homey. I rose and was just about to give myself a day-starting stretch—but a quick one, on account of you-know-what and the need to make plans for getting some—when I heard someone stepping down on the stern deck. I kind of knew who it was before I even turned to look, just from the sound of that footstep—female human, light but firm, strong.
And yes, a woman, light but firm, and strong: Suzie. Suzie! Those eyes, dark and shining like our countertops back home on Mesquite Road, and just how she stood and moved, more of a pleasure to watch than any other human I knew, except for Bernie, goes without mentioning. I hadn’t seen her in way too long. My tail revved right up.
“Hey, there, Ber—” she started to say, and then she saw Vannah at the stove, who happened to be hitching up her bikini top, which seemed to have slipped down a bit on account of maybe being a touch too small for her, which reminded me of a stripper we’d once interviewed on a missing G-string case that I hadn’t understood from start to finish, although I’d located the G-string practically from the get-go. But no time for that now.
“Suzie?” Bernie said, rising from the table in a way I wouldn’t want to call awkward, although somehow the table ended up overturning anyway, the two thick pipes and the coffee cup crashing to the floor. “What are you, um—?”
“Labor Day weekend, Bernie?” Suzie said. She looked directly at Vannah; the whistling died out right in the middle of things, ending in a harsh way. “Maybe you got distracted and fo
rgot,” Suzie added.
“I’m Vannah,” Vannah said, waving the spatula, which set off more slippage of the bikini top. “Chief cook and bottle washer. And he’s not as distractible as you’d think.”
Suzie’s eyes went hard and not shiny at all, didn’t even look like her eyes. She turned these scary new eyes on Bernie. “I know it’s only Friday morning,” she said. “My mistake—I thought it would be a surprise.” She laughed, one of those abrupt, unhappy laughs that’s mostly a snort through the nose. “And it sure as hell is.”
“Wait,” Bernie said. He glanced at Vannah, maybe looking for some help. Still getting her bikini top squared away, she raised her eyebrows and gave him a bright smile. “This isn’t what it looks like!” Bernie said, his voice rising. “I can ex—”
“Let’s not embarrass ourselves any further,” Suzie said, and in one smooth motion she turned and sort of glided right over the rail, stepping onto the dock and walking quickly to a small car parked beside the Porsche. Without a glance back, she got in and drove away, not too fast, raising only a small dust cloud on the rutted road.
“Wait,” Bernie called, “wait, wait.” He bolted toward the stern, slipping and almost falling in the spilled coffee. Bernie got himself over the rail, perhaps not with Suzie’s ease, but there was always his war wound to consider, and jumped into the Porsche. I found I was already there, sitting high and alert in the shotgun seat. Hadn’t Suzie just said something about surprises? And now I’d surprised myself ! Chet the Jet, in the picture!
Bernie jammed the key in the ignition and turned it hard. The engine went whirr whirr whirr. Uh-oh. I knew that whirr whirr whirr, although it hadn’t paid us a visit in some time. Bernie tried the key again, stamped on the pedals, shouted the kinds of things humans shouted during this sort of situation. If the car didn’t start soon, he’d be banging on it like it was a bad guy, another machine-smacking human moment.
The Sound and the Furry Page 21
