Fourth of July Creek (9780062286451)

by Henderson, Smith

So six weeks later, after several informal visits in truck stops, Stacks, Ruffin, and Pearl meet in Ruffin’s truck in Sandpoint, Idaho. It’s cold and windy on the city beach, the gusts off Lake Pend Oreille buffeting Ruffin’s pickup. Ruffin’s shit-talking as usual. He’s gonna knock over the First Interstate branch in Boise. He’s gonna pick off the marshals when they come for him. Then he’s gonna find a nigger church and toss a Molotov cocktail into it.

  Pearl is quiet.

  Stacks mentions he’s got some friends in Seattle who could use some sawed-offs for a job or two. Double-barrel, preferably.

  Ruffin asks what job.

  Pearl asks how much.

  Stacks tells Pearl he can pay $150 for single-barrel, $200 per double.

  Pearl says can you go three.

  Stacks says he isn’t sure. Pinkerton can go three, but he doesn’t want to seem too eager.

  I have to have three, Pearl says, sad as hell, like he’s having to ask Stacks for a set of kidneys. Pinkerton thinks maybe there’s something wrong with one of the kids. The guy doesn’t say a word for forty minutes of Ruffin’s shit-talking and then out of nowhere, How much, I have to get three.

  The guy is just busted-ass broke, Pinkerton realizes. He asks Pearl to give him a few days. He’ll call.

  I don’t have a phone, Pearl says. Call Ruffin. I need three and I gotta move quick if we’re gonna do it.

  Pinkerton makes it happen.

  The biggest regret of his career.

  Pearl and Stacks start to meet up without Ruffin, because the deals run a lot shorter without him. Cash, shotguns, I’ll meet you in two weeks for more. Seven transactions total.

  Once, Pearl muses how strange it is that he could get in trouble, how he could do time for sitting under a pine tree with a hacksaw and a couple of bird guns. Some kind of world, he says. This is the same occasion where he announces that he needs $350. He has to be careful, buying up all these guns. He has to drive farther and farther, gas money and everything cutting into his profits. Gas and money, he mutters. Shekels and oil the world over. And Ruffin has been bitching. Thought he should’ve been cut in on the deal, so now he and Pearl are on the outs.

  Ruffin says you’re a fed, Pearl tells him. You a fed, Stacks?

  Pearl looks sad. It’s like he already knows. For a minute there, Pinkerton thinks Pearl’s going to do something stupid. Pinkerton can feel the pistol in its holster against his calf, wonders can he get it out before Pearl does something stupid.

  You’d be burned by now if I was, Stacks says, wedging a laugh into the air. I bet you’re the fed, you crafty fucker.

  It’s always hard to tell exactly what Pearl is thinking behind that beard of his. Is he as world-weary as he looks. Is he ready to die already. Without his kids around, the guy’s like a lump of oatmeal, like something on the bottom of your shoe. He’s saying again he needs the $350. He just needs the money, the damn money.

  The thing is, the ATF is done throwing money at Pearl. Pearl is over. Pinkerton’s supposed to be setting up other buys, moving up the chain. But there isn’t a chain to move up. There’s just this sad guy in the sticks who will go all the way to Miles City for a shotgun to chop. $350, and it’ll be worth it. The sum total of his prospects is what the ATF pays him to break federal law.

  Stacks sighs, says he’s been meaning to talk to Pearl about this, that his partners are flush with shotguns. But does Pearl know where to get anything with a little more bang for the buck. Does Pearl have a line on anything like that.

  Don’t do it, Pearl, Pinkerton is thinking. Begging. Don’t do it.

  No, he doesn’t have a line on anything like that. Lump of oatmeal. Shit on your shoe.

  Weeks of no word. Pearl didn’t set up another meet and Ruffin’s not talking to Pearl and pretty soon Ruffin isn’t even talking to Stacks. His bosses decide Pinkerton’s been made. They’re going to relocate him to California. He did fine work, it’s just time to bag it.

  He’s mucked out the cabin and packed everything (sleeping bag, pistols, cast-iron cookware) when Ruffin comes barreling up the road in his truck. Asks where Stacks is headed. Pinkerton thinks fast, says the owner of the cabin’s selling the place from under him. Fuckin asshole, Ruffin says. But you’re in luck, Ruffin says. I just leased some property, have a trailer already up on it and everything.

  Whereabouts? Stacks asks.

  Jeremiah Pearl’s is where. Sweet little spot.

  It’s a nice Airstream trailer, on the other side of the meadow from the Pearls’ house, abutting a stand of buckskin tamarack. Wild mushrooms and carpets of moss and bumblebees turning figure eights in the slashes of sun in the woods, as if they too are stupefied by the beauty of the place. It’s a slice of heaven, Pinkerton can see right away.

  Ruffin racks out a couple nights with Stacks, and Pearl sloshes through the mucky meadow every evening, and they even drink a little beer together. Pearl looking over his shoulder up toward the house.

  He says the old lady has the spyglasses on him. Hand to God, she’s the brains behind the whole operation.

  There’s maybe a little rift there. Money worries and the stresses inherent to their worldview.

  Ruffin says Pearl’s allowed a beer every once in a while. Especially now he’s got a job harrowing a large farm out near Three Forks and the money from the timber lease. Working puts food on the table, he can have a little beer now and again.

  So Pearl is off on his harrowing gig in Three Forks. Pinkerton is whittling his time in the trailer, wondering what the hell to do with himself. How exactly to proceed. Watching the kids and the old lady. It’s like the kids have been told let him alone, taking the long way around the trailer when they go by with baskets, when they come back with baskets of huckleberries and mushrooms, with fish. He kind of wishes they wouldn’t. They’re nice enough folks, just trying to get by. But the woman is not neighborly. He sees her watching him from the house, but she doesn’t wave.

  One night, he takes a walk. Full moon or nearly so. It’s warm and clear and he hikes up the hill and takes in the view from the cliff overlooking the place. He’s sitting on the edge and when he gets up to leave sets a few rocks tumbling over, cracking the quiet. When he climbs down, he’s nearly blinded by a powerful jacklight.

  What were you doing up there?

  Just taking in the view, Mrs. Pearl. Could you get that light off my face?

  You’re not allowed up there.

  Why the hell not?

  I don’t know you.

  My name is Joe Stacks.

  Are you saved, Mr. Stacks?

  Saved?

  Saved by the Lord?

  Oh yes. Of course.

  I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you are who you say you are.

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  Don’t be going around the property. You stay at that trailer.

  She traipses away to the house, tells the kids who must be sentried there to go on in, get back to bed.

  In a few days, Ruffin returns, in high psychotic spirits as usual. He’s brought a used chain saw and a splitter and also a few sawhorses for some undisclosed project.

  What’s all this?

  Firewood.

  This is the first Ruffin’s mentioned anything about it.

  Maybe we should wait until Jeremiah gets back.

  The fuck for. I have bills, you know. I need this firewood money to get liquid. Cover my nut for winter, we get cracking.

  I dunno.

  Ruffin asks what the hell did Stacks think he was up here to do? Drink beer and live free? This is how Stacks is gonna cover his rent on the Airstream.

  That next morning, Ruffin’s gone and Stacks goes to work. He gets after the deadfall, but it’s wet through and some of it downright mucky inside, all the rain they’ve been having. For about a day and a half, he’s clearing out the useless wet wood and then he starts the standing tamarack. He’s cutting rounds when he feels someone near. Pearl’s old lady yelling at him from ten feet away
. He kills the chain saw.

  Who said you could cut down our trees?

  She’s holding one cowboy boot that came off in the meadow and is shaking the mud out of it.

  Ruffin leased it from Jeremiah.

  Cutting down our trees isn’t part of the lease.

  That’s not what he said. I was sitting right here with your husband when he and Bob were talking—

  When you two were feeding him beer, you mean.

  She yanks her boot back on, stomps her foot into it.

  Look, Bob said for me to do it to pay my rent. He comes back and sees I haven’t done it. . . .

  She’s already turned around and started back up to the house. Pinkerton has no idea what that means, should he stop or not. She just goes.

  It’s about suppertime anyway. He eats a can of chili and observes the children running around the house and then going in for dinner. There’s good couple hours of light left. He figures he’ll get after it again. The tree is already down. Might as well cut the rounds. Maybe talk to her tomorrow. Maybe see about finding Ruffin and squaring all this with him. Hell, the Pearls can have the firewood for their winter. It’s just one log.

  So he’s got a barrowful of rounds and is dumping them on the high ground near the trailer for splitting. Something claps him on the eardrum real good. Sarah Pearl’s open palm. She swings again. He catches her arm and she flings the other one, and he pushes her over a round into a spot of muck, and then she’s up again, and he’s saying he’s sorry, he didn’t mean to push her, and he’s trying to stammer out an explanation—

  Stars. Tears of light.

  He’s tumbled against the trailer, sliding along the siding. Everything keeling. He rights himself as the trailer window just over his head shatters. Something rattles around the countertops inside. He looks up as something nails him in the shoulder. It was the boy, throwing rocks. The eldest. Jacob. The other boy trudging with difficulty through the meadow, and Sarah Pearl, she ain’t calling off her son, and Pinkerton doesn’t know what to say or do. And does she know this. Does she know he won’t hurt the boy.

  Of course she doesn’t. Or the bitch is crazy, doesn’t care what happens to her kids.

  He doesn’t hear what he says until he sees Sarah and the boys hear him, their mouths and eyes gape wide: I’m going in my trailer for my goddamn gun.

  Sarah Pearl runs for the house like he’d drawn down on them already. He isn’t even sure if his pistol is in the trailer or down at the drive in his truck with half of his other things, but she tears off through the meadow with her boys like he’s firing at them.

  He should go. This very moment.

  Stacks would go.

  But Pinkerton, he’s jammed up. He feels like he must stay, must wait until Pearl gets back, and make everything okay. Fuck the case. If he just sticks out this rough patch, he can make it square with Pearl.

  Pinkerton steps inside the trailer. He’s in there a minute, then a while, then it’s sunset, then it’s dark and there are no lights on at the house. Now leaving seems impossible. Fact is, he’s afraid to go outside. If he’s honest with himself. Are they watching him. Is she watching him. Are they outside right now. He can’t hear a thing. Just the owl and the stream and the sighing trees. The moths kissing the screen. He locks the door and closes the curtains. Finds his pistol in his bag and beds down with it. He’ll go in the morning.

  His sleep is so light it’s some smallness of sleep, some rumor of sleep.

  He can hear the boy—somehow the footfall sounds like a boy coming through the grass and nettles at the backside of the trailer. Pinkerton moves just as the glass crashes and he’s crouched behind the counter as it rains down. He fires out the window, up into the sky from his position on the floor in the glass. There’s a moment in the wake of the shot where all he hears is the ring and the fade of it. There’s a stone on the floor. One of the kids is throwing rocks. Again.

  He yells that he doesn’t want any trouble, that he’ll leave in the morning.

  The metal teapot caroms off the stove to the floor and pisses the carpet. The report of the gun that Sarah or one of the children shoots echoes off the mountains. Kids playing little Indians on the high ground. He thinks of carbines and face paint and warbonnets.

  Another bullet hole appears in the wall near the ceiling. He can see a single night star just off center in it.

  Another.

  They are shooting at the trailer.

  They are going to kill him.

  He grabs the jacklight off the counter and flips it on. He leaps out the front door and holding it level with his pistol, sweeps the nearby area for anyone and then around the meadow. Nobody. He fires in the air and throws the light as hard as he can in the direction opposite the one he’s running—to the truck—as gunfire erupts from the house. He dives in and starts the pickup and bounds across the meadow in pitch-black. Trees rear up and he hits the brakes and then pulls on the lights and turns and guns the engine spitting mud. He still gets turned around and nearly high-centered on the zigzag out but then, his heart racing, he finally bounds through the brush onto the dirt road.

  Pinkerton touched crumbs of piecrust onto his finger and licked them off and burped silently into his fist. It was night now and had taken him an hour to eat the slice of pie and tell the story.

  “Was anybody hurt?”

  “Hurt? No. I didn’t fire at anyone. I just wanted to get out of there.”

  “So you’re sure none of the kids or their mother was hurt?”

  “No. Of course not. I was trying to avoid anyone getting hurt. That’s why we arrested everybody. Ruffin was bound to go up and catch hell for what happened with me—”

  “Waitaminute. You arrested everyone?”

  “Pearl and his wife, yes.” Pinkerton looked at his hands a moment. “I was still thinking that if they just gave us something, just a name, I could make it all go away.”

  “When? Wait. How?”

  “Took a few weeks, but they eventually came down the mountain to get supplies.”

  “And?”

  “A couple agents pretended to be broke down on the side of the road when Pearl and his wife were driving into town together.”

  “Were you there?”

  “In Spokane for the meeting with the US attorney, yes.”

  Pete shook his head and scoffed.

  “This explains a lot.”

  “About?”

  “About why Pearl is so paranoid.”

  Pinkerton sighed. He leaned forward and spoke low.

  “Look, the shotguns were small fry. The FBI had never even heard of him. And we all at the ATF knew the only thing he’d possibly be good for was getting us near some real bad guys.”

  “After everything that happened, you really thought he’d just turn informant?”

  “When we got them to Spokane, we laid out the charges and what they could do to make them go away.” Pinkerton palmed the table, as though he were spreading relevant documents for Pete to see. “Most people take the deal. But they wouldn’t play ball. They posted bail and blew off their lawyer and their court date. They didn’t understand what a big deal this wasn’t, how easy it would’ve been—”

  “So why not leave them alone?”

  “Are you deaf? These are federal charges. The US Marshals are serving the bench warrant. And it’s not like Pearl is standing down. Right after this, he sent a letter threatening the president. A month before the president was shot. And dozens more threatening letters. Governors. The Fed chairman. The chief justice of the Supreme Court. Ranting about currency, and then these coins start showing up? Shit, Snow. You got the Secret Service involved now, as agents of the Treasury and as security for the president. Even if he wanted to, Pearl can’t get off the radar.”

  Pinkerton tore his napkin in half, seemed amused that he’d done so, and set it on his plate.

  “He doesn’t want to get off the radar, does he?” Pinkerton asked.

  Pete rubbed his eyes, then laid the
m dully on Pinkerton.

  “You could help bring him in,” Pinkerton said.

  “Pearl doesn’t trust me.”

  “He gave you all those coins. To distribute, right? He trusts you that much.”

  “He sees my instrumentality, he says.”

  “Did you take him to Reno?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see him in Indiana?”

  “I was looking for my daughter there. And in Reno too.”

  “Your daughter.”

  “Yes, she ran away. The coins were just . . . there in my car. I dropped some in the machines for the hell of it. Or I don’t know why.”

  “Can someone verify you were looking for her there?”

  “Lovejoy. Washoe County Department of Family Services. Jenny, I think.”

  Pinkerton got out a pen and wrote the name down on half of his napkin.

  “Okay, I’ll check it out.”

  “You can do whatever the fuck you want. This has shit to do with me.”

  “But you see what’s coming, right? You see how bad this can all turn out.”

  “Yes.”

  “How are Pearl’s kids?”

  “I’ve only been with the middle boy. Benjamin. I haven’t even seen the wife or the other children,” Pete said.

  “You haven’t?” Pinkerton asked.

  “No.”

  “You don’t know where they are?”

  “Pearl says they’re away. Alive. Somewhere else.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t think it’s weird?”

  “Is there a single thing that’s normal about this? Pearl already thinks the whole government is one huge conspiracy to fuck him over. And how’s that not what we’re doing right now? You want me to help you and the US Marshals and Secret Service? Christ, can we really call him paranoid at this point?”

  Pete put on his coat.

  “He’s around the fucking bend,” Pinkerton said. “Hiding up in those mountains—”

  “Who wouldn’t be? You put him up to committing a federal crime? You pretend to be his friend and then you arrest him and threaten him with prison if he doesn’t inform on guys he doesn’t even know?”

  Pete slid out of his chair and stood. Pinkerton grabbed Pete’s forearm.