A Fine Kettle of Fish

by Lou Bradshaw

  Billy’s gone now; he was killed in a boating accident at the lake several years ago. They never found his body in about 250 feet of water. I didn’t go to the memorial service – at the time I didn’t know why – now I do.

  I couldn’t believe that I had erased the whole damned thing so completely for so long. They say that the human mind is a strange and awesome thing; I was beginning to believe it.

  Finally, I came up with what I thought was a pretty good plan. I would watch for him at night, walking home from some bar or tavern, and force him into my trunk with a gun or a knife. Then I’d take him to the hills and nut him, and while he was still alive I’d throw him off Table Rock Dam. Those turbines would chew him up so fine that there wouldn’t be any trace of him, just trout food downstream at Tannycomo or Bull Shoals. Somewhere in the early morning I drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  The rest of the week was pretty miserable, I was in a rotten mood, and I couldn’t tell anyone why. I tried to be as up beat as possible, but inside I was sick. The work was getting done and it was pretty good stuff, but I have no idea how. Maybe I was concentrating on what I was doing to keep from thinking. My date with Peggy was the highlight of my week, but I’m sure it would have been better if I’d been in a better frame of mind. Anyway it wasn’t a disaster.

  How could I have hidden that from myself for 10 years? I thought about seeing a shrink, but I didn’t know how to go about it. Besides they’re pretty expensive, and I’d be expected to tell him what was bothering me – I may never be able to do that. I decided that I would feel better when I killed Vince Simons, and I wouldn’t need a shrink for that. I could cure myself.

  I started keeping a watch for him, but there was no sign of him anywhere. I must have scared the hell out of him. There were lights on at his place – in the back and one in the basement. I figured he was holed up down there – probably with a shotgun. He had to come out sooner or later, and when he did I’d be there.

  Chapter 26

  August was almost over, and I had to get ready for school to start. I already had my schedule, but I needed supplies, books, and God only knew what else. Mack, Mickey, and I were all in the same time bracket; no one had anything after 3 in the afternoon. So we decided to carpool with each driving every third week. I didn’t know how well that would work out, but it was worth a try.

  As far as clothes were concerned, I didn’t have a clue what college guys were wearing. I’d just have to wait and see. I figured that I could look like Dobie Gillus or Manerd G. Krebs, or something in between. It just wasn’t important to me at the time.

  Getting ready for classes was a perfect distraction. It kept me from brooding on Vince Simons during the daytime, but late at night I was still troubled. I didn’t want to be alone much, so I wasn’t spending many nights at the cabin. Lloyd Dickey and the FBI had disappeared from my mind completely.

  Labor Day was coming on strong, and with it came a barrage of sign work like the 4th of July. I was damned busy with sale and parade banners. The addition wasn’t quite finished, but I was working in there because I needed the space. We had run some extension cords for lights, and of course a radio. With the windows open, there was usually a nice cool breeze at night.

  Just like the 4th I was finishing up late, but this time even later. Jacky had closed up about 2 hours before, but I still had some more to do. I wanted to finish before I left, so I could have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to my self. Mickey came by about 11 o’clock, so I sent him to Crockett’s for coffee. The moron couldn’t help telling Dolly, “Like I like my women – blonde and sweet.” when she asked him how he wanted it, so I was stuck with cream and sugar. Blah!

  He sat around and watched me and asked a bunch of questions, which I didn’t mind. If the truth be known, I was grateful for the company – even Mickey. After a while he said that he had late a date and had to go. He had a date all right with a Playboy Bunny, if he could get the staple out her belly – without sticking himself with it.

  It was well after midnight when I finally finished. I felt the need to unwind a little and thought I might try and score a couple of beers somewhere. I was too tired to drive up to Mona’s. Maybe I’d cruise around town a bit or run out to the overpass and see if there was an extra brew in someone’s trunk. Sometimes, depending on who’s working the bar at most of the local taverns, you can get a 6 pack out the back door for a couple extra bucks.

  When I locked the door and turned to walk to my car, I could sense rather than hear that someone was there. “Well, bullshit!” I thought. I was getting tired of people popping up on me in the dark. I looked left and then right, and sure enough, there in the dim light was my old pal Lloyd Dickey.

  “Hey stud, how’s it hangin’?”

  “What do you want Dickey?” I was tired and wired, and I didn’t feel like playing his stupid games.

  “Just came by for a little chat. That’s all.”

  I was in no mood for his bull, so I told him, Lloyd, if you got something to say, then say it, otherwise get the hell out of my way.”

  He was suddenly serious; it was like he was thinking about which way to jump. I could see the debate going on in his mind, then he said, “That nigger that was killed out on the highway was haulin’ somethin’ worth a lot of money to my friend, and he wants it back “

  “And you figure I got it. Is that it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “somethin’ like that. If the cops had got it they would a made a big story out a it – blowin’ their own horn. It wasn’t in the car, I checked. So who had the car before the cops got it? You, that’s who.”

  “You figure that out all by yourself, Lloyd? That’s amazing!”

  “Yeah.” he said earnestly; he was quite proud of himself.

  “Look, Dickey, let’s say I had this thing, what would it be worth to me to turn it over?”

  He calculated for a few seconds – started to speak – calculated some more, finally he said, “A hunnered dollars.”

  I laughed out loud, and he didn’t like that much. “For a hundred dollars you’re wasting your time and mine. I wouldn’t even consider anything less than five thousand dollars.” I just pulled that figure out of the air.

  “Hell, Brickey, he oney gave me five hunnered dollars to get it from you, and that’s all gone.”

  “Then we got nothin’ to talk about, do we?” I started to walk away.

  “Brickey, you don’t know who you’re dealin’ with, boy!”

  “Sure I do – L-Lloyd Dickey, punk.” I was mad; I was just mad enough to forget that this screwball was half nuts.

  “Not me, ass hole!” He shouted, “I’m just the middle man. This friend of mine is bad, real bad. There was a couple of boys tried to hijack that load – probably caused the wreck. They’re both feedin’ the catfish in the Mississippi, off Mud Island.”

  “I gave you my price, Lloyd. When I see some cash, we’ll talk. Take it or lump it.” I started to walk past him again. It was pretty dark out there in the shadows, and I didn’t see where it came from, but the next thing I knew he was standing there with a gun in his hand. It was a nasty little pistol, and he held it with both hands – pointing at the middle of my chest. He was shaking with either fear or furry, I didn’t know which. That gun was waving around like a water witch’s rod pointing at Niagara Falls.

  “Give it to me Godammit!” he shouted. “I owe that bastard five hunnered dollars, and I got nuthin’ to give him. Dammit, I got to have that stuff, or he’ll kill me. Man, you don’t know him. I’ll shoot you, Brickey; I swear to God I will.”

  “Then you’ll never get it.” He was close to panic, and I had to try to get some reason into his thinking. I had to get my own thinking under control – had to stop being stupid.

  Before I knew it, he was in my face with that gun pressed against my temple. I could smell him; he stunk something awful, and I could feel the heat coming from him. What in God’s name was I doing thinking about smell and body heat at a time like th
at, when I should have been thinking of a way to get that gun away from him. The problem was that I wasn’t being any smarter than he was; I was getting madder and stupider. The greater the stink – the madder I got. I was taking his odor as a personal affront. Well if he was going to kill me, at least I was going to die facing the little possum punk. That’s when I told him, “If you’re going to shoot, then pull that damned trigger, and quit fouling my air, you stinkin’ bastard. Don’t you ever wash? Dammit!” My next thought was, “Why did I say that? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

  Quick as a cat he jumped back, and sounding like a little kid he said, “I would, by God, I swear I’d do it too if I had some bullets!”

  I couldn’t help myself – I just cracked up laughing. I guess it was the pressure letting loose. I could hear Lloyd making little kid noises, whiney and building up like he was going to throw a tantrum. I would have been better off if he had thrown a fit because what he threw was that ugly little gun.

  It cracked me in the side of the head, and the stars came out as I fell against the building. I could hear him running away and I yelled out, “Don’t let your meat loaf.” as I slid to the ground.

  After just sitting there for a few minutes, I knew that I had to get up and get inside. The trouble was I didn’t want to; all I wanted to do was sit there. I was doing a pretty good job of just sitting there. When my head started clearing I was expecting Nick Drago to start lifting my head and letting it drop. At last, my mind took over and forced the rest of me to get up but not without an argument from every part.

  It was nearly 1 a.m. and I didn’t want to call Junior at home, not as woozy as I was. He’d think it was a crank. So I called the Highway Patrol and asked the dispatcher to have him call me tomorrow. The dispatcher told me that he was on patrol and out of the unit at Crockett’s Café.

  “When he checks back in, would you ask him to meet me at Brickey’s Sign Shop?” The dispatcher said that he would and hung up. Within 5 minutes, he pulled into the lot and parked in the rear. He waited for what seemed to be a couple more minutes before getting out and coming in.

  “What’s up?” he asked as he slipped through the door.

  I only had one small work light on, so it was rather dark in there. I was afraid that Lloyd would find some bullets and come back shooting. I told him from the shadows what had happened and how panicked Lloyd was. I didn’t know if he was scared about the money he owed and couldn’t pay, or if he needed the stuff for himself. I didn’t know if he was a user or just a punk.

  “So they’ve worked out the hijacking angle, and they’re probably fairly sure that those 2 guys didn’t get the stuff. I’ll pass that on to Fletcher, and see what Memphis can do on that end. If we can add homicide to the package, then when we get our boy we’ll have a little more leverage.”

  “That’s all well and good,” I said, but that little bastard nearly knocked my brains out with that gun. Man, I got a headache!”

  He took a flashlight and shined it in my eyes a couple of times, then said, “I don’t think you have a concussion, but you might want to take it kinda easy for a few days. Where is that gun, by the way?”

  I didn’t know. I had assumed that he took it with him; I remembered that he took off running, so I said, “Probably just outside the door somewhere.”

  He stepped outside, and I could see flashes from his light as he looked around. He came back in carrying an old short-barreled 32 revolver by a pencil through the trigger guard. “I’ll give this to Fletcher and see if we can get a history on it; maybe something we can use against Dickey.”

  “So what do I do in the meantime?” I asked.

  “Lay low and wait. You want to go to a motel for a few days? I’ll get Fletcher to arrange it.”

  “Na,” I said, “I got a cabin up on the James. I can spend a couple of days there. I start school on Tuesday, and I still got some things to take care of.”

  “Okay, we’ll keep an eye out for Dickey just to see what he’s up to. It’s hard to know which way that cat’s going to jump.”

  “Fine, I’ll go up to the cabin and come back sometime Monday”.

  He left and I went on home, but I didn’t fail to check Simons’ place for lights. There were none on now; there had been some just a few days ago. It had been nearly 2 weeks since I’d seen him.

  * * *

  I spent a pretty uneventful Saturday. Most everyone was at the lake or up in St. Louis for a ball game or just off somewhere. I didn’t have any visitors at all, and that was just fine. I was nursing a pretty fair headache, so I just roamed around more or less surveying the property. I wanted to see what that acreage consisted of. It was a pretty nice piece of ground, though not much good for farming – too rocky and hilly. It could probably support some cattle or horses, but I wasn’t planning to put anything on it. There were a lot of horses and cattle around if I wanted to go look at them now and then. I would rather look at the deer and the hawks.

  There was plenty of water; I even found a live spring not 50 yards from the cabin that could be tapped and piped in. Except for improvements on the cabin, I couldn’t see anything that I wanted to change.

  In the afternoon, I took my watercolors and stuff down to the river. I also took my shotgun, and kept it within reach most of the day – one has to watch out for snakes and possums. I spent some high quality time sitting on the bank slopping paint on paper. Trying to get the impression of tree bark transferred from the real thing to a sheet of paper turned out to be a challenge, and the attempt at creating an illusion of sunlight on water was enough to make me forget about my aching head.

  I cooked some hotdogs over a wood fire on the gravel bar. Hotdogs are great, but I was going to have to learn some cooking if I ever expected to live up here. I liked the dogs as well as anyone but not for every meal. About 8:30 I went on up to the cabin.

  Rummaging around in some old boxes, I found some books amongst the junk. There was an old paperback copy of Tom Sawyer. I’d never really read it, oh, I made a book report on it, but I got that from the movie. So, I started reading it, and lo and behold it was pretty darn good. I had trouble with some of the old language and the slang, but I worked my way through it – that Mark Twain guy was pretty much okay. I laid on my cot and read by coal oil light until I got sleepy, then I blew out the lamp and went to sleep with that shotgun next to my bed.

  * * *

  I was up before dawn padding around heating up water for coffee on the camp stove. Trying to decide if I had gotten a good nights sleep or not was the extent of my thinking, until it dawned on me that if I had to think about it at all then I’d had a good night. I had just poured the water through the drip basket when I heard the car coming up the hill.

  Chapter 27

  A Volkswagen Beetle was crawling up the hill. I didn’t recognize it, and I didn’t think big time gangsters drove VW bugs, but Lloyd would drive anything he could get into and hot-wire, so I was on alert and hoped I was ready. It was still too dark to see well. The Beetle stopped on the other side of my car, so I couldn’t see the driver. I heard the door close and the gravel crunch under someone’s feet. I grabbed the shotgun and stood pressed against wall beside the door. When I heard footsteps on the little front porch, I opened the door a crack and was ready to throw that shotgun into action.

  My heart was racing, but I wasn’t sure if it was fear, excitement, or something else altogether. Standing there on my porch was Miss Peggy Maxwell with a grocery bag in her arms. I was sure glad I didn’t have to shoot her

  I set the gun down, opened the door, took her bag, and gave her a huge hug. I just stood there holding her for a long time, neither of us saying anything. When we separated I looked down to see tears in her eyes, but she was smiling up at me.

  “What on earth are you doing up here at this time of morning?” I asked.

  “I decided to take you up on your offer to scramble me some eggs.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a carton of eggs – grade ‘A’ extra large. “You
aren’t going to shoot me are you?”

  “Not unless those eggs are rotten.” I whispered in her ear as I hugged her again.

  “What’s the gun for?” she asked.

  “Well you and your friend both seem to think I may not be the right sort for you, and I guess I was just trying to prove it. Actually I was afraid you might be revenuers lookin for my still.”

  “What friend? What kind of not right sort? What’s going on? Talk.” So I told her what her frank, open faced, protective, and chunky girlfriend had said at the Overland Truck Stop.

  “If I’m going to pick the wrong guys, and screw up my life – that’s my business – not hers. And I’m not all that convinced that you’re not the right sort. Of course that gun does bring up some questions.”

  “Well,” I said, “I have been wrong plenty of times, but every now and then I have been the right sort.” I took her hand and led her to the camp stove where the coffee pot was just about through dripping, then I found her a clean cup and said, “Let’s get some coffee and go for a little walk, there are some things I want to show you.”

  The sun was just climbing over the hills to the east, and it was beautiful – all pink and blue-gray. I shared my morning inspirationals with her, from dewdrops and red tails to a white tail in the morning mist. God and Mother Nature were both working overtime for me. When we got back to the cabin and I was busy screwing up the eggs she kept looking at me while she was setting the table with paper plates and plastic forks. “What?” I asked.

  “What – what?”

  “What are you looking at?”

  “I’m not really sure, but I think I like it. Even if it doesn’t fit into my well ordered and organized life. I must be nutty, as a fruitcake to get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and drive half way to God knows where; just so some guy can try to shoot me. Then take me on the most beautiful walk for an hour only to bring me back here and destroy a dozen eggs. God, Brickey, I’m either losing my mind or losing my heart.”