PIKE

by Benjamin Whitmer

  “What’s his partner’s name?” Pike asks.

  “I don’t know anything about that. The papers barely bother with him.”

  Pike smoothes down his beard, thinking.

  Maude eyes him, letting smoke drift out of her wizened nose. “That what you were looking for?”

  “Partly.” Pike nods for a minute. “I think I owe you thanks,” he begins again slowly. “Last time I saw you, you told me to come back and you’d tell me why you buried my daughter.”

  “You don’t owe me nothing,” Maude says. “I didn’t really bury your daughter, I just told the folks from the county where to do it. That’s what I told you. To come back and I’d tell you why I had her buried her where I had her buried.”

  Pike looks at her.

  “Cincinnati’s an old city, Mr. Pike, older than most people know. It was founded by a band of ex-slaves, poor whites and Indians. They called themselves the Ben Ishmael Tribe. They were wandering tinkers and minstrels, and Cincinnati was one of the stops on their route. It was only after they’d cleared the land for themselves that the white settlers moved in to claim it. Did you know that?”

  “There’s a whole pile of things I don’t know,” Pike says.

  Maude doesn’t look surprised. “They used to caravan between here and Indianapolis. Even after Cincinnati was civilized they still used it as a stopping point, but they were made to camp down on the shore of the Ohio with the boatmen and the dockworkers. My grandfather used to take his pots down to their camp for mending. He said there was everything in the world down there. The dirty rich smell of the plants the Indians and Africans burnt to keep themselves clean, the creeping sound of Scotch Irish fiddles, the dirge-like cant of the Muslims intoning back to Mecca, everything. He said they kept fires burning, too, all around the edge of the camp. Fires burning with some kind of grimy wood smeared in pitch. He said walking through that greasy smoke was like walking into some other world. Time ran backwards when you stepped into that smoke.”

  “They still around?” Rory asks.

  She shakes her head. “That was at the beginning of the century, and there was plenty of talk about putting mongrel races out of existence.

  As I read, they were penned up in roughcut forts on the bank of the Ohio and army doctors were sent in to hack out the women’s uteruses.”

  “A nation only regenerates itself on a heap of corpses,” Pike says.

  “Saint Just,” Maude says.

  Pike raises his eyebrows.

  “I’d forgot about them for years. But I was reading a book on them when Sarah died. And I remembered how she showed up in Over-the-Rhine like she had some kind of claim on it. She had a Scotch Irish fiddle she played, too. So when the men came to take her body I asked them to bury her on McCulloch Hill. With the way names get set on things around here, I figured it had to have something to do with the Ishmael tribe.” She shrugs. “It was a whim.”

  “I didn’t know she played the fiddle,” Pike says.

  “She used to say it reminded her of you.” Maude looks at him. “But then most things in her mind circled back to you if you followed them long enough.”

  Rory rocks back and forth on the hind legs of his chair, off somewhere else completely. “How come I never heard of them? The Ben Ishmaels.”

  “Places swallow stories,” Maude says. “Especially stories that nail it down as what it doesn’t want to be.”

  “You said you never saw Krieger coming around,” Pike says. “Do you know anybody who might have? Anybody in the neighborhood who might’ve kept an eye out?”

  Maude sticks a fresh cigarette in her mouth and fingers a piece of tobacco off her lips and wipes it on the rim of the ashtray. “You might try those two boys who live in the house on the other side of hers. Number 402, I think. They look to be a little of her type.”

  Pike raps the table twice and stands abruptly. “Thank you.” When she starts to rise to show them the door, he raises his hand for her to stay seated. “We can find our own way out.”

  CHAPTER 23

  ~ Whatever they’d been doing to the poor bitch, they’d been doing it a long time.~

  Number 402’s brick is going green with mold and the lopsided porch rambles away from its pillars, one corner of it propped up with cement blocks. A tattered chain link dog kennel runs down the side, the cement floor smeared all over with fresh dog shit and dirt. Pike raps three times on the door.

  “What do you make of her story?” Rory asks. “About the Ben Ishmaels?”

  “You stick your arm into any of these local histories, you’ll come out shit up to your elbow.”

  “I could tell you didn’t think much of it.”

  “It was her using my daughter as a bookmark I didn’t think much of.” Pike raps on the door again to no more response than he got the first time. He thumbs his glasses up his nose and unholsters his .357.

  “We’re starting with the guns out?”

  Pike holds a hand up for him to be silent. Movement inside. A scuffle, a crash and the quick harsh rasp of a dog barking. Pike rears back and kicks the door in.

  “Should’ve figured that was coming,” Rory says.

  The house is a double of Maude’s. Pike takes the dingy hallway in three strides. Rory follows, kicking through mounds of garbage, fumbling the Glock clear of his pants. A huge bald man huddles in a wheelchair at the kitchen table, his eyes wobbling in his head like bulbs of fat. Next to him, a kid with a wispy blonde goatee scratches through a pile of cigarette packs and Black Label cans. Pike plants the muzzle of his .357 about two inches from the kid’s head, but he keeps scrabbling through the trash, oblivious, his brow furrowed in concentration. Then he finds what he’s looking for and spins, holdingan electric stun gun at Pike, electricity arcing blue between the metal prongs.

  Pike thumbs the .357’s hammer back, unimpressed.

  “I’d drop it,” Rory says. “He’s been looking for somebody to shoot all day.” The stun gun clatters on the tile floor and Rory winks at the kid. “Good choice.”

  “What do y’all want with us?” The kid’s wearing faded blue jeans and a filthy white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. “We ain’t got nothing to rob.”

  “Nothing?” Pike picks a syringe off the table and tosses it on the floor.

  “We ain’t got none left.”

  “We ain’t here for your smack.” Pike raps the kid’s forehead with the muzzle of his gun. “We’re here to talk.” He cracks the kid on the forehead again, raising a welt. “Now.”

  The kid throws his hands up between the gun and his face. “Jesus, man,” he squawks. “What the fuck do you want to talk about?”

  “Start with your name.”

  “Bogey.”

  “Suits you.” Pike flicks his eyes at the idiot. His wheelchair fidgets back and forth in short jerks and a spit bubble wavers on his mouth like a water puddle in an earthquake. “You?”

  “His name’s Wood,” Bogey says. “He don’t talk.”

  Wood nods his fat head violently, the fat under his chin jiggling like pudding.

  “Where’s the dog?” Pike asks.

  “Dog?” Bogey says innocently.

  Pike barrel-raps him on top of the head again, spotting the welt with blood. “Jesus!” Bogey shrieks and points across the kitchen. “She’s right there.”

  Pike looks. Rory looks. The room stands still.

  She’s a smallish black pit bull, a year or so from being a pup. She cowers in a narrow alley between the refrigerator and the grease-crusted stove, whimpering and rasping at the air with her tongue. One of her front legs is twisted impossibly back and she’s bleeding from a ragged gash on top of her head, the floor around her layered withdog blood and shit. Whatever they’ve been doing to the poor bitch, they’ve been doing it a long time.

  Rory tosses his Glock into his left hand and slaps Wood across the face with a hard right palm. Wood’s head rollicks furiously on his fat plug of a torso and tears spring into his eyes.

  Pike
flashes him an appreciative grin. “You’re picking up on this.”

  Rory stares Wood in the face. Wood snuffles and chokes, trying to hold back his tears, but he can’t. His jaw drops, his eyes squint shut and he cuts loose with a long wet wail. Rory reaches back to let him have another palm.

  “Hold up,” Bogey screams hysterically. “Hold up.”

  Rory looks at him.

  “That ain’t right. He ain’t but a kid, man. Up here.” Bogie taps his temple. “He’s retarded. He don’t know no better.”

  Rory turns to him. “You do?”

  “Hey, man, we was only having fun.” Bogie’s face is pinched and cringing. “No big deal.”

  “Let’s see it.”

  “All right, man.” Bogie shuffles on the floor for the stun gun, his eyes fixed on Rory. “Watch the dog,” he says, and crawls to her on all fours through the shit and the blood. Rory watches the dog. Bogie punches a button and jams the probes into the dog’s ribs.

  Her jaw gapes and her head vibrates, flinging dog blood and spit in stringy arcs across the kitchen. Her eyes roll in her sockets, her broken paws pound an electrified tap dance on the kitchen tile. Wood’s round face explodes in a huge smile and he bangs on the arm of his wheelchair, erupting in a high-pitched screech of joy.

  Bogie pulls the stun gun back. The dog collapses on the floor like her bones have disintegrated under her skin. “See, it ain’t no big deal.” Bogies stands and his eyes flinch up at Rory’s hand. “I kind of think she likes it.”

  Rory swallows thickly and his gun hand drops limply to his side, the way a man run through in a duel might drop his sword.

  “You knew my daughter.” Pike’s voice is low and level. “Her name was Sarah, and we know you knew her.”

  Bogie scratches the back of his head. “No, I don’t believe I do.”

  Pike swings his .357 on the dog and pulls the trigger. The muzzle blast haloes his fist in fire and the bitch’s head sprays blood vapor and bone chunks. Woods shrieks wildly and smacks at his ears as though the boom of the handgun is an insect swarm he can slap away. Pike levels the .357 at his chest. “Your friend’s next,” he says to Bogie. “Then you. I’m looking forward to you.”

  Bogie’s chin bobs up and down frantically. “She was a hooker. Used to live across the street. We had some of the same friends. She come over a couple times and partied with us. She’s dead now.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else. I barely knew her.”

  “You said you had mutual friends. Who?”

  “Bitch named Dana.”

  “I know Dana. Where do we find her?”

  Bogie hesitates, weighing his answer. Rory takes the stun gun out of his hand. He turns it over and finds the power button. “Hey, man,” Bogie says, eyeing him. “There ain’t no need for that. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  Rory grabs the top of Bogie’s head in one hand and rams the probes against his throat with the other, crushing in his windpipe. “I know where her mom lives,” Bogie coughs out. “We broke in once, stole her TV. I can take you there.”

  Pike holsters his .357 and pulls a cigarette out of his pocket. He lights it with his brass lighter and snaps his lighter shut. Then nods at Rory.

  Rory punches the power button. Bogie’s head lurches forward, then back. The tendons in his neck hop and squirm to the tune of the juice and he tries to scream, but he can’t. He gurgles on his saliva for a second or two. Then collapses on the shit-covered floor, pawing his neck and coughing, his face the color of a bruise.

  “You’re coming with us to Dana’s mother’s,” Pike says. “If she ain’t there I’m gonna shoot you in the face and dump you in a ditch.”

  Bogie hacks at the saliva in his windpipe, his face blotched all over with vicious red patches and all sickly white underneath. He tries to talk, can’t.

  “You understand?” Pike kicks him in the ribs with the point of his cowboy boot. Not lightly.

  Bogie yelps and claws his side. “I can’t leave Woods. He can’t take care of himself.”

  “Sure he can.” Pike boots the dog’s food bowl across the room. It knocks up against Wood’s wheelchair, sloshing runny shitlike dog food onto the floor. “Some food for you, you dumb motherfucker.”

  Wood’s big face splits with sobs like a canvas awning splitting under the weight of a rainstorm.

  CHAPTER 24

  ~ You can get away from a good upraising.~

  Derrick parks on the side of the mountain road on a turnaround overlooking Nanticonte. Devil’s Elbow, they call the spot, but Derrick doesn’t know why. It’s where he comes to think. Always has been, ever since he was old enough to drive. He gets out and leans on the car and looks down on the small town, the town’s buildings little more than darkened smudges in the swirling snow and the coal smoke, the power cables drawing out into the mountains like a map grid, and then lost in the trees, as though looking at an old photograph. He cracks a beer and drinks. The town looks to have been stuck down in these mountains since the mountains got stuck here, to have become a part of the landscape. And it has, in a way. Nothing changes. Fifteen years from the end of the twentieth century, but you sure as hell can’t tell it here. The women with their hive hairdos, the men with their buzzcuts, the kids growing theirs long, wearing Rolling Stones shirts, smoking reefer.

  You can get so far away from where you’re from you can’t ever come back. Not entirely. You can break all ties with your past, you only have to be willing to carve a chunk out of yourself you won’t mind missing the rest of your life. And you have to be ready to deal with whatever kind of shit the holes’ll fill up with. The old lady long dead now, and the old man in a home, struck stupid with senility. Drooling and shitting on himself, completely shed of the only thing he ever had to brag about, his son the war hero. Derrick finishes his beer, tosses the can in the ditch. He was a good father. Well. You can get away from a good upraising. You can get away from most anything if you work at it hard enough.

  Derrick reaches through the side window of the Monte Carlo tobreak out another beer. Half drunk already. What now? Buy a little house in this shithole town and settle down? Get fat on beer until the heart gives out altogether?

  Well, why not?

  He opens the beer and looks out on the town and spits. Then closes his eyes, as if exhausted from the exertion.

  CHAPTER 25

  ~ Like some kind of apes crawling out of the mud.~

  Pike’s smelled a few things in his life he could’ve gone without smelling. Shithouses in August, busted refrigerators full of meat, junkies with a year-long skim of filth on their skin to keep the heroin from escaping through their pores. And a roomful of broiled Mexicans, stuffed together and decaying, the stench rising like a great filthy bear and wrapping Pike in its greasy paws. He doesn’t like to think of that one, and anyway, stuffed into the cab of his truck with Bogie anything you try to think gets run out of your mind by the stench. Pike lights a cigarette and tries to burn it out by inhaling the smoke through his mouth and nose at the same time. It doesn’t work. He turns on the radio as if that might help.

  “Nice place you had there,” Rory says to Bogie, rolling down the window.

  “Shit, it ain’t mine,” Bogie says. “That’s all Woods. I’m just nursing the motherfucker ‘cause his daughter’s off getting married.”

  “Bet she’ll be impressed with the job you’re doing too.”

  “Hey, I take care of the motherfucker. Anyway, I got my own problems. I got a place on the West side. Got a woman, too.”

  “And she let you go to take care of your friend? Being the loving type you are.”

  “Shit, I’m loving. I keep her grass trim. Keep her lawn wet.”

  Rory looks at him.

  “I plow her land. I know how to clean out her backyard.”

  “One more,” Rory says, “and I’ll shoot you.” Pike thinks he’s joking until he sees Rory’s hand on the Glock.

  Bogie doesn’t notice. “Yeah
, sure. Anyway, she set my trunk outdoors a couple weeks ago.” His voice turns woeful. “Her family puther up to it. Bunch of backwards hillbilly motherfuckers. They don’t like me being with her neither, saying I ain’t good enough. Ain’t that some shit? Bunch of shitass rednecks straight out of the hollow like some kind of apes crawling out of the mud. And I ain’t good enough.”

  “Hard to see what they might have against you,” Pike says.

  “Fuck you. Anyway, one of them cocksuckers, her brother, came up on me, started talking shit about this and that and how I wasn’t fit for his sister. Pissed me off, so I knocked about half his teeth out with a length of pipe. She got all salty over it. Said me being around wasn’t good for the kids. I ain’t seen none of them for almost a month.” His eyes water and he puts his hand up to them. “Shit,” he says. “I hate crying in front of motherfuckers.”

  “How many kids you got?” Rory asks.

  “Two. Girls. I’m telling you, I can’t live without them. When I’m asleep I’m dreaming about them. When I’m awake I get no rest.”

  “Get a job,” Pike says. “Clean up.”

  Bogie shakes his head mournfully. “I got habits, man. There ain’t no getting away from it. I can only be what I am. If I could be something else I would.”

  “Well, it’s a hard row to hoe,” Rory says.

  “It is that. Sixty miles through rock, forty more through sand.”

  “Whyn’t you two shut the fuck up before I start crying?” Pike says.

  Bogie clutches his stomach and farts loudly, filling the cab with a sick rumble. “I been drinking beer all day. I need food,” he whines.

  Rory sticks his whole head out the window, his Adam’s apple spasming. Pike brakes the truck at a cross street. “Which way?”

  “Left. Then take a right at the light. Dana’s old lady lives over in Hyde Park, we got a ways to go.” Bogie’s stomach makes a sound like a bull elephant being garroted. “I was so hungry once I ate a robin.” He farts again. “Oh Jesus.”