by Chris Bauer
All of this, my private hell.
The media knew nothing about my uncle or his despicable habits until my father was no longer a politician. They learned what Uncle Ernest did to other kids when the authorities found him lying in a pile of blood-spattered child porn in his bedroom, his throat ripped out from an animal attack. His nasty Doberman had turned on him, the authorities decided.
Looked legit, I said when the local cops interviewed me and my brother, both K9 handlers, and them looking for an expert. That had to be what had happened. Sure.
My brother’s working dog partner at the time, Rufus, was also a Doberman.
Payback could be a bitch.
No compromising pictures of my brother in Ernest’s pile of child porn, or in his computer. My mom, brother, and I made sure of it. And no remorse from any of us. Dad, complicit by his silence and savaged by the media for it, eventually committed suicide.
I slowed the bike down as I neared the entrance to the celebrated pothole, back here for a second look, this time in the daylight. The two tall, black entrance gates abutted and were padlocked. The park was closed to tourists today. Emergency maintenance, the sign said, understating the truth. I got off my bike, left it on the shoulder near the entrance, strapped on my backpack, and hoofed it the rest of the way. A lot less freaky in midafternoon than it had been in the dark last night, where one misstep could have turned into a 150-foot drop and some serious hurt. In the daylight the park came across as a living, breathing wonderland with a picnicky, fresh, early-summer feel. Pavilions, barbecue pits, hiking trails. A tall forest that surrounded acres of green grass and ball fields. The park’s geologically correct name was lame. “Glacier Pothole State Park” highlighted the park’s main attraction, but it ignored everything else about it. And at the moment, a quarter mile of yellow crime scene tape conspicuously decorated it.
A four-by-four SUV, the lettering SHERIFF painted across its door panels, centered the space in front of the chain-link fence that had been cut away, protecting where a few skeletal pipe rails had been uprooted. The fencing had been wired back together, something far from permanent. The vehicle had one occupant, in there with the windows up, the engine running. If he was here on watch he was doing a shit job of it, too interested in his phone. I startled him when I tapped on the window. The door opened; I gave him room. He stepped out, all aristocratic, an older dude who filled out his khaki uni really well. A former cop or cop wannabe; a bruiser. No gun.
We faced each other, his nose and cheeks with cavernous pores, him a hundred pounds bigger, five inches taller or more. He looked me up and down, then looked past me to see no vehicle in my wake. “Park’s closed, miss,” he said, showing eye contact with attitude. “You’re trespassing. Turn around and leave the way you came, right now.”
It was so close to the pothole here, a nicer cop might have added, “Have a nice day and be sure to watch your step.” He instead stayed with his gonna-fuck-you-up death stare. I raised my hands palms-up to signal I came in peace, gave him my name and my occupation, then pleaded my case.
“I was first on the scene here last night. Trevor the Park Ranger Cadet, or I should say his aunt Dody, can vouch for me.” I offered my hand. He eyed it, left me hanging bad as if he’d just seen me pick my nose with it.
“You’re the broad who went after the two gangster types at the pharmacy. You stiffed me. I came by looking for a statement about them, had to get the skinny from Ursula instead. Stay put.”
He went for his phone and walked off some distance between us. A few grunts later, his face still hard as a hand grenade, the call ended. He wandered back. “You check out. Al Pemberton.” We shook hands. “I’ll suffix that with ‘the law in these parts,’ but I’m thinking you know that now. Dody says hi. You’re free to look around. Anything I can help you with?”
I told him no. I wasn’t up for explaining myself at the moment.
“Suit yourself.” Then, over his shoulder on his way back to the SUV: “I got stuff to do in the truck. Watch your ass, Miss Fungo. First wrong step’s a bitch. Don’t ruin my day.”
A C-minus for customer service, but we were good for now, him and me. I dropped my backpack, retrieved my binoculars and stayed outside the yellow tape while I circled the pothole looking for anything else Mr. Linkletter might have left behind. The perimeter was spotless, with grass, dirt and gravel all mixed underfoot and absent any litter, and odorless go-green compacting trash receptacles instead of bee-rimmed trash barrels that smelled like landfill. I checked out the glacial hole from all angles, occasionally leaned over the crime scene tape for a better look, the sunlight sparkling off shiny flecks strafing the rock strata like tiny stars. Some TS whispering crept over me.
“—sunlight sparkles sinful sinkholes shitty heinies shiny pecs, the schwartz be with you, strafing stogies starry starry night you bite the big one, wrong step is death—”
Halfway around the hole I trained the binoculars on Al’s SUV. He was napping.
Something glinted just below the section of the pothole his SUV protected. It was metallic but more substantial than the flecks in the rock strata. I trekked back over there for a closer look.
Al’s head was on his shoulder, his eyes closed, his mouth open and drooling like a liquid-center chocolate cherry. I found a cut in the fencing then stepped between his SUV and the pothole rim and leaned over it. I now made out what glittered there: coins, on a narrow ledge not too far from the top. More glances around the rest of the pothole and it finally sunk in: coins were everywhere. This looked like the largest wishing well in the world.
Except the coins on the ledge below me didn’t look like real money, like the others did. Too big and too brassy, probably with some aluminum in them. More like large tokens for a bus or the subway.
Head down, I adjusted the binoculars for the short distance, ten feet or so. I looked straight down into this beast of a hole, managing the vertigo and focusing the lenses, one more twist, there, yes, clearer now, not tokens, casino coins, yes, a gambler, he’s a gambler, yep, Sands Casino it said on the coins, maybe if I got closer—
—no no awFUCK NO, oh shit I’m sliding, the abyss the dirt the grass my feet—
—grab something, anything—
—fuck fuck fuck—
Full stop, abrupt, dirt under my shirt, in my bra, in my mouth. My heart… it was so far up my throat I could have chewed on it.
One foot on a ledge, the other foot dangling, I pressed my face cheek against the jagged rock, was glued to it, my arms and body angled forward and pressing the hole’s uneven wall like it was bumpy Velcro, but I was totally fucked because it wasn’t. A strained glance above me told me I was about ten feet from the top.
“Al! A little help here. Dude. Al! Wake up…” A Tourette’s release didn’t help matters.
“—RANGER DANGER DINGLEBERRIES!”
Don’t look down—
But I did. Holy fucking mother of God. My foot wasn’t on the ledge, it was next to it, on something that got spongy and bowed with my weight shift, something with give to it. Wrong. Something with grab to it. It was wrapped around my heel, pushing it, inching it, and me, up.
Al’s voice from above. “Don’t—move—a muscle.”
I looked up, saw Al’s scrunched face peering over the rim at my sorry ass. He disappeared, was gone five seconds, ten, stretching to twenty, the longest twenty seconds of my life…
“—shit-fuck shit-fuck shit-fuck—”
My mouth convulsed itself, cursing unrestrained until I was out of breath, gasping, my upper body sweating, shivering, swaying, I was losing my balance, but holy baloney shit-shit-shit the rock—the fucking rock I was standing on—it shifted to rebalance me.
“—what the fuck, what the fuckity fuck-fuck—”
“Grab this,” Al shouted from above, “and hold on. Both hands.”
A rope ladder slapped the pothole wall next to me, down as far as my shoulders.
“It’s tied to the truck bumper. Don�
��t climb, just hold tight, hands, arms, whatever. The truck will pull you out.”
I reached for the rope ladder, wrapped a hand around one rung, eased it in close under my face then snaked the other hand and arm through two more rungs. A cautious breath. I left my perch, Al watching. All of me was on the rope now, no support below.
Al: “Ready?”
Me: “Go.”
The second longest twenty seconds in my life passed while Al started the truck and backed up, the rope ladder slowly dragging me up the side of the hole, scraping my knuckles and elbows and chest against the wall’s rough surface, up, up, and finally out. I lay prone on the grass. No pee in my pants, far as I knew, but there should have been.
Al: “You can let go of the ladder now, miss.”
I got to my feet, reached out and hugged the big motherfucker, and the big motherfucker hugged me back.
I needed to see what had kept me from the 150-foot drop after Al stopped verbally kicking my ass. I wrapped my arm around the rope ladder a second time, this time was practically sewn to it, the ladder still attached to the SUV. After a slug of courage from Al’s flask, I leaned back over the edge, located the rock that held me, a small thing that jutted from the wall, cupped at the end like a large soap dish, and no bigger than one. Christ, how incredibly, unbelievably lucky.
Fully upright again and leaning against the truck with Al, I shared more of his Jack. His hard-ass demeanor had softened; he knew he did good. We talked warrior to warrior, marine to army K9 ground-pounder, both of us in Iraq One, Desert Storm. The war talk petered out. Next topic, my Tourette’s. Next topic after that, the hamlet of Rancor.
“I have to tell you, Al, this place stymies me.”
“How’s that?”
“No reported violent crime for fifty years? That crosses generations. C’mon, there had to be a felony in there somewhere. Hell, I witnessed a drugstore robbery and an assault just today.”
“Yeah,” Al said. “That got the town’s attention. Punks.”
I picked up on some short-stroke action going on inside his clasped hands, a subconscious knuckles-to-palm piston pumping to go along with his distant, vengeful look. “No one around here has any interest in any no-crime record,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “That’s a bullshit media thing. The only thing going on here is our town watch has been a major deterrent. A bank robbery put the town on notice. I’m here as sheriff for window dressing, although I do get my share of busting up fights at the local watering holes on occasion.”
“Major deterrents,” I repeated to him, “apparently included avenging his death by killing the bank robbers.”
“A long time ago,” he said, “so I can’t really comment. Who knows for sure. I was maybe ten years old. I can tell you that no one in Rancor was upset about what happened to those bastards. Then, or now.”
Al talked about other close-knit communities similar to Rancor. Places like South Philly, South Boston, New York City’s Little Italy. Places where residents knew who belonged and who didn’t.
“Know why I’m the only cop now? Low crime, upstanding citizenry, that all helped make the decision easy. Our population is declining. Which meant that when our police chief Dody Heck wasn’t chasing petty crimes like underage drinking and shoplifting, she was stuck sitting on her ass. When she retired, the rest of the police force was disbanded. The town elected a sheriff instead. Me.
“Enough about Rancor. What the hell was so important in this pothole that a pretty woman like you had to try a stunt like you just did? Some of the landscape around here is fragile. Plenty of holes, man-made and otherwise. Lots of soft soil.”
“Something big and shiny,” I told him. “I had to have it.” My near-death experience yielded one souvenir. I handed him a Sands Casino coin. “It was on the ledge.”
Not a plastic chip, mind you, but a minted metallic coin the size of a silver dollar, its center a shiny aluminum. Just like my binoculars had advertised.
“The car that took the header into the pothole,” I said, “there aren’t that many cherry sixties Impala convertibles out there. It was just like the one belonging to a missing Allentown woman. Sands Casino is close to her house. Ergo, the coin is from the car. The guy last driving it is the bounty I’m after. A bail-jumping attempted rapist. My guess is he’s still around here somewhere.” I fished out a flyer for him.
“A ‘guess’?” Al said, studying Linkletter’s mug shot, some side-eye at me, “and not an ‘ergo’?”
Al was funning me. Fine, it was all good.
“Yeah, not an ergo,” I said. Ergo was a good word. It was okay if he thought I was deep.
“Ergo me this then, Batman. Are you fucking kidding me? A near-death experience for that?” The corner of Al’s mouth lifted like it had been tugged by a fishhook. He found this entertaining. “Here. Got something for you. Happy gaming, grunt.”
Two large coins dropped into my palm. Sands Casino coins, same as the one I came out of the hole with.
“They were on the grass ten or so yards back, in the path the car took. Other scattered change too. Keep ’em. I’m not planning to be in Bethlehem any time soon. All you had to do was ask.”
I now saw better what went on with the Impala. A straight path down the incline toward the pothole, clear of trees but far from flat; uneven as hell. The car started its run, shook and rattled as it sped over large bumps that abruptly lifted and dropped it down hard on its shocks, the coins going airborne, scattering in its grassy wake. A repeat occurrence as the car bumped its way over the edge into the pothole abyss.
What I learned from this: one, Mr. Linkletter liked to gamble, or had been to a casino, or someone he was with had been to a casino, and two, I had not just cheated death this time around. I was one off-the-chart lucky bastard recipient of some skunky juju that curb-stomped the Grim Reaper on my behalf. The rock that wasn’t a rock had gripped my heel like a hand, held it, cupped it, shifted and rebalanced me. Had I lost my balance, it wouldn’t have let go. Swear to God, what was now a rock was a human hand before.
I had trouble processing this, felt queasy. I needed my fuzzy keychain.
“—tits, titties, titty-tits
“—ergo—ergo, pergo, leggo my eggo…”
26
The fat kid hadn’t been easy. He woke up a mile down the road, threw a tantrum, then blew chunks all over himself and Randall. Now the car was a mess and reeked of semi-digested Doritos, Pop-Tarts, stomach acid, and energy drink. Randall’s interest in him decelerated from extreme boner to dead-dick flaccid in the time it took the boy’s projectile vomiting to travel from his mouth to Randall’s crotch. The kid was unconscious again, slack-jawed from multiple fist pummels to his head when Randall couldn’t get him to shut up, although one of the kid’s outbursts had been entertaining.
“… they will find you…”
He for sure had balls, but Randall decided it wasn’t worth the effort to clean him up and keep him alive and quiet for the afternoon snack he’d planned for himself, so seeing those young balls in action wasn’t going to happen. His gag reflex told him to cut his losses and get the kid out of the car, now.
He found a small stretch of road momentarily empty of travelers in both directions, heavily forested save for an abandoned farmhouse. A faded coal mining mural on weathered gray sideboards adorned an adjacent barn. Randall pulled the car onto the shoulder then onto grass and stopped under the mural, a rendering of a pair of palms-out open hands cupping black coal nuggets. The kid groaned as Randall yanked him out the car door with a handful of khaki shirt. He dragged his chubby body around the back of the barn, a heavy copse of evergreens stretching up a hill that surrounded them on three sides. He dropped the kid onto a patch of grass, the soft landing unintentional, considering Randall intended to kill him. Next to the kid, a neglected coal pile, and lying next to the coal, a rusty shovel, its blade exposed, but most of its handle was under a layer of dirt and leaves and overgrown by weeds.
A shovel. Perfect. Grues
ome, but with less noise.
The kid groaned again, louder this time.
Randall needed to close this aborted interlude out. He pulled at the shovel’s buried handle. The dirt gave a little, the handle loosening. He tugged harder, breaking a sweat. It loosened more but then wouldn’t budge.
Behind him, the kid moaned.
Randall brushed away the leaves and uprooted the weeds to get a better look at what was making the shovel’s extraction so difficult. He tugged at it again. The handle rose another inch but no more.
“Goddamn it…” He planted both feet, put his body into it. In a minute he would give up and simply strangle the noisy fucker or get one of his guns.
What—the fuck—is the problem here?
He struggled, and the handle lifted a few more inches, exposing… something. Randall strained, pulled, and blinked hard at what now broke the surface.
… a tug of war—with a—with a—
… holy FUCK—
Wrapped around the wooden shovel stock was a fist, or what used to be a fist but was now five boney fingers with hanging flesh black from desiccation, its grip on the shovel like a vice. The fist would not let go.
Behind him the groggy kid staggered to his feet. He stumble-rushed Randall, surprised him with a massive squirt of pepper spray to his face and head. Randall released the shovel, covered up and cursed, reaching wildly for his attacker. The fat little bastard staggered around the side of the barn and was gone. Randall doubled over in stinging agony and dropped heavily onto his butt, where his tailbone greeted the hard, jarring edge of the exposed shovel blade.
Randall needed to move. The kid was gone, either into the woods on foot, or maybe a passing motorist picked him up. Twice before, this had happened, where someone he’d had plans for had gotten away. First was a prostitute, his word against hers; he pulled up stakes before anything came of it. The second survivor said she was a practicing witch, but she never filed charges. Her witch curse of a painful genital dismemberment still haunted him. Eyes swollen from the pepper spray, he needed to get back into the car and onto the road right now.