The Nail Knot

by John Galligan

  She kept her eyes on me. I’m sure she saw my interest.

  “Why don’t you just take the ponytail yourself,” I asked her. “Bury it, burn it, get rid of it somehow? Why do you need me?”

  Steady eyes, hot green. “Like you said, I’m withholding evidence. Not destroying it. Someday that ponytail’s going to show up again and get Dad off.” She nodded towards the road. “Unless B.L. catches me with it—which could happen any second.”

  After a long paused she added, “Besides, Ingrid, Jake’s wife … I’ll bet … I’ll bet someday she wants it back.”

  Now she lowered her gaze. She put a chapped hand around the dead watch and waited for me to say something.

  “You clipped off the dead guy’s yellow sally.”

  “Because B.L. didn’t need to see it.”

  I gave my chin a doubtful rub. I hadn’t shaved since Pennsylvania, and my palm against my whiskers made the only sound for a long moment. “If the dead guy was fishing the sally,” I said at last, “then he was fishing at around eight o’clock. That establishes a time of death. And seven was when you left your dad at home while you went to the village board meeting. When you pull that fly off, it looks like you’re protecting your dad.”

  She was barely patient. “Dad didn’t do it. And it didn’t happen at eight. That’s why I threw away Jake’s fly. Everybody in town knows the yellow sallies hatch at eight. All somebody would have to do is kill Jake earlier and change his fly. Then the killer is safe at the meeting while Dad takes the blame.”

  I made an ugly little Dog grin as I reviewed her theory. She made some sense. Someone could have killed Jake Jacobs earlier, then tied on a yellow sally to make it look like he died while fishing at eight o’clock—since the yellow sally mayflies only hatched just before dark, and everybody seemed to know that. Could have. But in my heart of hearts, I didn’t think anybody in Black Earth—maybe nobody in the whole state of Wisconsin—could be that smart.

  “You see, here’s the problem,” I said. “A guy like me … I can’t really … I mean, I’d like to help … but there’s no way to get in touch with me … so I couldn’t really …”

  I moved from behind the table to the door. I had made my decision.

  “Time for you to go,” I concluded.

  She looked around the Cruise Master once more. “I’m guessing you’re flat broke,” she said. “I can get you a thousand bucks by nine o’clock. Then you take the pony tail with you.”

  “I’m long gone by nine.”

  “Then I’ll mail you the money.”

  “You can’t reach me. I live in this vehicle.”

  “I’ll mail it to a friend.”

  “I don’t have any friends. I’m a trout bum. I’m nothing to nobody.”

  She did an odd thing. First she rolled her eyes. Then, with the ease of someone used to redirecting stupid animals, she took me by the belt, precisely at my center of gravity, and she steered me away from the door and back where I’d come from, back against my crusty little sink, out of her way.

  “You’re full of manure, is what you are,” she said, and she bent over my Wisconsin map with a pencil. “Everybody’s something to someone,” she said. “And you and I can help each other.”

  On the corner of my map, she wrote:

  I.O.U. the price of one bull Junior RR 15, Box 37

  Black Earth, Wisconsin 53765

  608-831-9765

  “Thanks for the beer,” she called as she cut quickly out the door. Her mud-spattered blue pickup roared up the dirt drive, through the steel gate, and out of the campground. “I said no!”

  But she was gone. And she had left me the dead man’s ponytail.

  She had implicated me in her crime

  It was twilight by the time I was functional enough to find a dry shirt and put a quart of oil in the Cruise Master.

  I had spent the intervening hour in a dither, caught between assorted courses of action while downing the remainder of the Pennsylvania twelve-pack and nipping open and shut the curtain that faced the county highway. I thought about working for money, and I thought about working for truth, justice—you know—the goddamned human contract. I even thought about knowing a woman again. But all those roads led inward to feelings the Dog didn’t do any more, and so I fell back on my standard answer: move. Just as I settled on that solution, Bud Lite’s police cruiser roared down the county highway, slowed, flashed a sidelight my way, but did not turn into the campground. I knew it was my chance.

  Looking back, my plan was perfectly in tune with my realities at the time. Some psycho farm woman had dumped her problem on me. That’s how the Dog finally played it. She had implicated me in her crime. But I could duck the entanglement if I moved decisively. As for the fate of Jake Jacobs … how was that my problem?

  So about ten, with the Cruise Master all prepped for travel, I dug out my cell phone and tried to call my tax guy, Harvey Digman. But the old coot was out somewhere, probably practicing Tai Chi on Boston Commons with a new girlfriend from one of his book clubs—or maybe at his gourmet cooking club in Back Bay, shredding shallots with a Wusthof knife. I left him a message—the Dog was moving—and I asked him to send my next three hundred to a bank about five hours north. Then I drained the last beer and used a pencil to shove Jake Jacobs’ ponytail into a Ziploc bag. I tore the map corner off, the piece with Junior’s address, balled and stuffed it, and then I dropped the pencil in as well. Outside the Cruise Master, I added a handful of gravel and sealed the bag. Then, flashlight in hand, I made a careful inspection of my surroundings.

  Along the highway, the campground was bordered by a brushy line of sumac that harbored nothing more threatening than coons, skunks, and possums. I checked the pop-up trailer at the south end of the campground. No vehicles, no lights, no action. It was early. The usual round of partying kicked in around bar time. I walked to the campground’s other border, the disappointing body of water that the locals called Lake Bud.

  It was a breezy evening. As I shone my flashlight over the water, a Styrofoam cup kited across the rippled surface. The same breeze brought up a murky, fetid smell, and I was reminded of what I had learned from an exploratory ramble the day before. Lake Bud was in fact a defunct mill pond. It was Black Earth Creek backed up and spread out muddily for a mile behind an old millhouse and a treacherous slab of hundred-year-old concrete. The day before, standing on the foundation of the old mill and looking downstream toward the village about a half mile distant, I had spent a minute or two wondering why the hell the dam hadn’t been taken out a long time ago, wondering why the so-called lake was even there—serving no purpose that I could see, except to ruin one whole stretch of a perfectly lovely trout stream. But Black Earthlings had their ways, I decided. So never mind.

  Just then, a pair of headlights swung into the campground. I froze behind the cover of some cattails. To my relief, the lights were not followed by the profile of a cop car—nor by the returning shape of Junior’s pickup. This vehicle had a higher, thicker profile. I crouched and watched the dark shape crawl past the Cruise Master and continue down to the pop-up camper. There it circled, went halfway back toward the Cruise Master, and stopped. The headlights went out. The interior lights went on. A figure moved about inside. Okay, I told myself. Another camper. Big deal.

  So I made a simple change to my plan. I would do my deed from the far shore of Lake Bud. I knew I could hike up to the thin end of the mill pond, where the stream flowed in. I could cross the current on an old two-plank bridge. From there I could skirt the edge of the woody hillside where I had seen LOTS FOR SALE signs through my binoculars. Back in there somewhere, opposite my position in the campground, I planned to wind up and hurl the bag of ponytail-and-gravel and let it sink deep into Lake Bud. I could make the Big Two-Hearted River by morning. I could have miles and miles of solo water.

  I made it up to the end of Lake Bud, my trail broadcast in the night by the expanding stillness of frogs. I located the little plank bridge, which was s
lippery with dew and springier than I remembered. I smelled the cold trout water against the warm black mud, and I teetered twice, but I got across. From there I led a legion of mosquitoes through the dark woods along the far side of the lake, aiming my flashlight at the For Sale signs and orange tree tags. Across Lake Bud, I could still make out the new vehicle in the campground, a figure moving inside. But he couldn’t see me, I decided. Itchy and out of breath, unwilling to go further, I put out my flashlight and approached the water.

  That’s when I saw the ghost. No. Not true. I heard it first. I was pushing through a stand of black willow shoots at the water’s edge when I heard what I figured first was a muskrat splashing around its den. In the dark, of course, there is always a separation between what the mind thinks and the body feels, and the sound froze me for a moment, while my pulse galloped. Down boy, I commanded. No more ghosts. Think muskrat.

  But it was as I waited for physical calm, for the reconnection of mind and body, that the whole muskrat illusion began to break down. The sound was too regular—a slow swish-splash-swish through the water—and then against my will I saw them: human feet, haloed in light, moving slowly out across the surface of the lake.

  Doubt the Dog. Go ahead. I was skittish as hell in those days, always seeing things at night, before the vodka took hold. But I am telling you that I saw human feet that night on Lake Bud. Bare feet. White ankles. All else was in black shadow behind the beam of a small and precise flashlight.

  And I am telling you that those feet were walking on the water.

  On the water. On top of it. Out twenty, thirty, fifty feet away from my position and then turning northwest toward a little back bay in the millpond. Then the feet paused. I heard a rattle, a pause, and then a sound like faint rainfall. The sound stopped. The light turned, and then the feet turned—headed back toward me. I gave it one swish-splash-swish.

  I suppose the Dog in flight might have passed for a buck deer, blind and running sideways, with a hockey stick caught in his antlers—but otherwise I’m pretty sure I was detected. The flashlight beam chased me a hundred yards through brush, nipping at my heels. When I reached the campground, I stayed outside the Cruise Master for a good long time, gasping, flayed and itching, afraid to open any doors for the telltale dome lights that would spark across the lake and give me away.

  But give me away to whom, I wondered. Or what? My ghosts, to that point, had never carried flashlights.

  With my hand on the Cruise Master door handle, afraid to open it, I was a sitting duck for the guy in the other vehicle. His dome light went on. He spilled out the driver’s side of a large red Suburban.

  He was a keg-bellied guy with a brisk, unbalanced stride, angling across the thick black grass.

  “Oh, there you are,” said Bud Bjorgstad, Village President.

  Be sure now, fella

  He was right. There I was. Could I argue?

  The village president came at me in a top-heavy canter, keys in one hand, can of beer in the other—massive, work-scarred hands.

  “Hey, fella, seriously,” he said, giving me the rubbery smile, “so sorry you had to be the one. Gosh, you come here to fish and look what you get in the middle of. A dang murder of all things. You gotta be shaking your head, I’ll bet. Too bad.”

  High beams flashed over our heads and caught in the burr oak. A patrol car had turned through the steel gate into the campground. Its beams blasted the dusty flank of the Cruise Master, the faded aqua stripe and the deep, rusty wound where I had backed drunk into a fire grill at a campground in Idaho. Slowly, I pushed the bag of hair into my hip pocket.

  “You know,” said Bud Bjorgstad, “we just want to thank you and let you know we appreciate the service you done for our community. Dirty work, you know. Heh-heh. Seriously.” He thrust an out-sized, beer-cooled paw and introduced himself. “Village president since I sold my farm in ‘89,” he said. “That’s my kid, coming in here in the soup-and-nuts car. Kinda learning on the job.”

  Bud Lite got out alongside us and left his engine running, headlights blazing, radio squawking, the pointless occupation of kinetic space and the wanton consumption of fuel being parts of the cop thing he had gotten down just right.

  “Here’s our fisherman,” said the village president to his son. “I had to come out and find him myself. And like I says to him, we appreciate his service to the community. Real sorry he had to get into this and all. Not a pretty thing. So no camping fees.” He gave his son a chin-first look. “You got that?”

  The police chief responded stiffly. “When did that get decided?”

  “About ten seconds ago,” said the president. He tucked at his shirttail and puffed. He turned to me. “See now, the thing is, fella, we got some oddities going on here. One thing, I’ll tell you, strikes me funny, our friend Jake Jacobs was out there fly fishing only he had no fly on. You fellas do that often?”

  I answered that we didn’t.

  The president tucked and hitched and moved in closer. Time to lean. He put his big mitt against the prow of the Cruise Master, right in the dried bug spat, and canted his weight against it. “So how might that happen? A fella with no fly on.” Bud Lite began to speak, but Bud Heavy shut him up with a terse, “You just listen.”

  I said, “Fly fishermen change flies all the time. Sometimes, during a hatch, every couple of minutes. Or else we break flies off—on fish, rocks, trees, brush, or snap them off in the air, with a bad cast.”

  “See?” said the president, turning to B.L. “I knew if we asked a real fisherman, we’d get ourselves an answer that made some sense. So in other words, fella, our friend Jake had a fly on, but somehow it came off….”

  I said that could have happened.

  “As in, say, somebody took it off.”

  I said that could have happened too. Bud Lite snorted. He rapped out a pinch of Copenhagen and tucked it under his bottom lip. I was only half-conscious of my hand, pushing the ponytail deeper into my pocket. Not that I was agreeing to help out Junior O’Malley. Not yet. But watching those two catch up with the facts of the case was like watching a couple of mean dogs figure out they could go ahead and walk on the linoleum. I wasn’t about to help them either.

  “Now that farm gal,” said the president, “Junior, she came down around the body, I gather. ‘Cause when she called the boy here, she said it was Jake Jacobs that was dead in the creek. In other words, she came down and saw who it was. Am I right? She got off her tractor and she came down? Fella?”

  I said he was right.

  “She touch Jake’s tackle at all? Maybe take his fly off?”

  Now you might imagine that here the Dog was faced with a moral dilemma. But the fact is that I was nothing more than determined to leave.

  “No,” I said. “As far as I know, she didn’t touch his tackle.”

  Bud Lite spat and said, “See? That’s what I’m saying. Junior ain’t touched nobody’s tackle in a long time. That’s what worries me.”

  The president, Bud Heavy, turned to his son with a dismayed look. B.L. said quickly, “I mean it’s been three-four years. She could be getting over Darrald.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  The chief nodded toward me. “She and him seemed pretty friendly by the time I got there. So I figure—”

  President Bud stopped him with a seething interruption. “What in the hell has that got to do with the price of beef, Dwighty? Goddamn it!”

  I guess he was Dwighty. I guess he didn’t know he was called Bud Lite. He spat and put a scowl on me, like I had tricked him into trouble. President Bud said, “See fella, we’re still working out the kinks in this village police force situation. Had none for the longest time. Then all these big houses go up around the edges of town, fancy folks driving around all over, suddenly we need a little traffic work, you know? Little radar here and there. Little bit of education on the proper way to park. So that’s where we’re at, see?”

  “I see,” I said. “But you’re also in a count
y.” God help me, for some reason I was talking back to the guy. “And if you’re in a county, you’ve got a sheriff.”

  Bud Bjorgstad let go of the Cruise Master long enough to dismiss my idea with a two-handed wave. “Oh, hell no,” he said. “We don’t need to bother the sheriff about this.”

  “I can handle it,” said Bud Lite.

  His father re-set his stiff-arm against the Cruise Master. “Darn right you can, Dwighty.”

  We stood there in the dark for a moment. I looked over Lake Bud. It was black and smooth and smelly. It was a tragedy, a diminishment, a slowly seeping poison. Trout water had to move. It had to flow. It had to push against you.

  “Funny thing, though,” said the president, “and I’m glad we caught you, fella, because the boy here finally got himself braved up to flopping over the body—”

  “I waited for Halverson,” huffed the chief defensively. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. Wait for the coroner.”

  “So we had our little exercise in book learning,” the president went on, “and finally we got poor Jake flipped over. Come to find out, he was missing something. Used to have him one of those cindy-handles on the back.”

  “Ponytail,” said B.L.

  “All gone,” said the president. “And now his wife, she’s upset as all get out, I can tell you, but she was sure Jake didn’t get a haircut. I mean, not on purpose, anyway.” He had a rubbery wince too, besides the smile, and he gave me that. “Goddamned awful thing to find out,” the president informed me.

  “And Halverson,” said B.L., jetting tobacco juice into the dark grass, “he found some hairs in Jake’s mouth.”

  I waited for the question. The police chief puffed and squirmed around a little, waiting for his father to ask it. The president had sagged too far against the Cruise Master, and he adjusted his feet. I thought about my hip pocket. It felt hot, tight, bulging. Bud sent his other hand out through the dark and found my shoulder.