by Colin Kersey
“Any fish in there?”
“A thousand more or less,” Virgil answered.
“Really?”
Curious, I peered into the pond’s depths for a sign of fish but could see nothing except our reflections and that of the trees, hills, and waterlogged sky. “How big?”
“Not very.” Virgil held up a large hand with thumb and forefinger perhaps three or four inches apart. “They grow faster during a mild winter like this last one. By the time summer rolls around, they should be legal size up to maybe eight inches.” He paused to spit. “There’s two of these man-made ponds. The second one is further down the hill. We use ‘em for raising trout, not for fishing. The natural pond I’m about to show you is where our customers fish.”
“What do trout eat?” I had fished for trout as a kid using nightcrawlers, but that did not seem practical for feeding a thousand or more fish.
“Each other, unless we feed ‘em. Rainbow trout are cannibals. You drink?” Virgil asked suddenly.
“No.” Which was true if you were talking strictly about the present and not the past. Like yesterday, for instance, when I needed a pint of Jack Daniels to anesthetize my pain—mental and physical.
“Take drugs?”
“No.”
“Been in jail?”
“Never.”
Virgil paused, appraising me. “What exactly do you do?”
“Try to stay alive” was probably not going to get me the job.
“Try to get by mostly,” I said.
“‘Try to get by,’” Virgil repeated. “That’s one I haven’t heard before.”
He started walking again. “You ever been to church?”
“Sure.”
“And?” He gave me that sideways look again.
I shrugged. “Didn’t work for me.”
“Didn’t work?” Virgil frowned.
Yeah, I thought. Me and God got an understanding: He doesn’t give a damn about me and I don’t either. I swallowed. My frustration rose as we walked in silence.
“You consider maybe you were the one who didn’t work?”
I had to look away from his stare.
The final pond was at least an acre or two in size and even had its tiny island where a moss-covered cherub raised his hands skyward amid a half-dozen hemlocks. A small wooden shack stood on the far side of the pond, its porch extending out over the water.
Virgil stood, hands in his jacket pockets, staring at it.
“My wife’s studio,” he said at last. “She used to draw, paint some, before she got too sick from the cancer. I am not sure the medications did her one bit of good. Just made her more ready to go, I expect.”
I waited silently, uncomfortable with where the conversation was headed, but curious, too. I was still a rookie when it came to mourning the loss of a spouse, but I was certain that a long goodbye was better, no matter how sad and painful the ordeal, than no goodbye at all.
The rain continued to thwock upon my hat and sneak inside the collar of my jacket. A sudden swirl in the dark water seemed far too large for some trout. I half-expected to see a beaver or muskrat appear.
“I used to carry her down here,” Virgil said. “She would sit there bundled in a chair on the deck for hours at a time. She would read, sleep, read some more. Mostly just sit there, staring at her island. She called it ‘Isla Mujeres’ after some place down in Mexico she visited in college.”
He looked off in the distance where the rain-shrouded mountains sat silently watching. “Don’t get down here much anymore since she died.” Virgil’s lined and weathered face had become so white, I could almost see the network of capillaries just below the skin.
Bereavement gripped my heart in its heavy, calloused hand. “I’m sorry.”
“The job doesn’t pay much,” Virgil said. “But it’s year-round. Six hundred a month, plus room and board. That there’s the room.” He nodded toward the shack. “If you were expecting a mansion, I expect you’ll be disappointed. It has a bed, a small space heater, a sink, a toilet, and a shower. That’s about it. You still interested?”
While grateful for the offer of employment, I was stunned by the small sum. Seventy-two hundred a year? It was now obvious why the job remained open. Other than gasoline and the occasional meal out, I did not foresee the need for much in the way of money. On the other hand, six hundred a month for full-time work had to be either a mistake or a joke.
I attempted a smile. “You’re kidding, right?”
Virgil scowled. “Did you not hear me? I said six hundred, take it or leave it.”
Uh oh. I tried to amend for my blunder with a nervous burst of arguments. “We’re talking no health care benefits, am I right? And no retirement plan, social security, or income tax—correct me if I’m wrong.”
“Think you’re pretty smart, do you?” the other man said, his cheeks now flushed. He kicked a divot in the sodden turf with the toe of his Rockport. “Fine. You don’t want the job, you can get off my property.”
“Wait. Let me explain.”
But Virgil pressed on, head down and hands in his pockets, toward the house. Meanwhile, the rain continued unabated as if it might never stop and the entire world would once again be drowned in a vast and merciless sea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
From the moment I heard Daddy stomping up the porch stairs, I could tell that something was wrong.
“What happened?” I asked.
I heard him hang up his coat and hat. When he didn’t immediately tell me, I knew it was bad.
“We don’t need his kind around here. Got an attitude, that one. Already got more than enough bad attitudes to go around here. Don’t need another one.”
I heard a vehicle start up in the parking lot and the angry squeal of springs as it drove away.
“What’d you do, Daddy?” I tried to sound normal, but secretly boiled with fury. Men! Such fragile little egos that they must protect at all costs!
“Can I get some more coffee?” I heard him sit at the table in his usual spot.
“How come you two argued?”
“He seemed to think the pay was beneath him.”
“Even after you explained the job included a place to stay and meals?”
“Must have looked around and thought we were rolling in dough.” He sipped his coffee with a loud slurp. “We don’t need his kind. Not here anyway.”
“What kind of money did you offer him?”
“Same as the last one. Six hundred.”
From the news programs I listened to, I thought this sounded low. “Maybe you should have asked him what he thought was fair, Daddy?”
“Don’t matter now what he thinks. He’s gone for good. I chased him off.”
I hoped he was wrong. Because I seriously doubted that I could continue the charade of Daddy’s little girl and being treated like the family’s slave much longer.
Lately, while the others slept, I counted sheep. And dreamed of slitting their furry little throats.
***
“Idiot!” I pounded the steering wheel as I drove back the way I had come earlier, the sky growing darker by the minute as evening approached and the rain continued its unremitting assault. The narrow, tree-lined road serpentined along the hillside, occasionally revealing a farm with cleared acreage and a few marooned outbuildings. All too soon I would be back in Mount Vernon with the busy I-5 slicing through it and the decision clamoring to be made: where to go? I drove as slowly as I could and dumped the last of the aspirin bottle out onto my lap, gulped the few remaining pills, and tossed the empty container on the floor among the empty plastic water bottles and fast-food wrappers. At this point, neatness no longer counted.
Don’t ask me why I argued with the old man. A difference of a few hundred dollars a month—or even several thousand—was inconsequential to my survival. The problem was not money, after all. It was staying alive.
According to Catania, the FBI agent who had interviewed me in the hospital, my only hope was to disappea
r so thoroughly that I could not be found by the cartel who wanted their money back and me dead. With its remote location and lack of background checks or employment forms required for new employees, the trout farm was as close to being ideal as I had been able to find with limited resources and on such short notice.
Now what? As poorly as the interview with Virgil had gone, I might as well have stayed in Southern California and saved myself three days of driving. The drenching cold combined with the preposterous—not to mention illegal—compensation level offered had shocked me so greatly that I had simply reacted instead of nodding in agreement. I had been within minutes, possibly seconds, of taking possession of the tiny cabin Virgil had offered me and able to lay my head down to sleep without the constant stress of worrying about where to go. Now the moment was gone, and I needed a do-over.
I felt the familiar swelling in my heart from Heide’s death, but there was anger, too. Of all the thousands of banks, governments, and other legitimate financial entities to steal from, my wife had chosen a Mexican drug cartel notorious for cutting off the heads of their victims! Based on the ginormous amount of money changing hands every day at the hedge fund where she worked, Catania suggested that she could have stolen a million or two and possibly gotten away with it—a premise which Jeff’s previous lifestyle supported, before he got too greedy. No one might have noticed or taken the time to sort it out if they had. Just a rounding error. An inadvertent lapse by two employees digitally lobotomized by the billions of dollars rushing past their eyes on high-definition monitors and morally impaired by the Lambos, Ferraris, Bentleys, and Aston Martins glinting in the deep shadows of the executive parking lot.
If I had known about Heide’s plan, I could have stopped her, explained the risks, and pleaded for sanity. She would still be alive, and we would be together right now, relaxing over a glass of wine or a margarita, watching the boats go by on a Saturday evening. Instead, I was soaking wet, hungry, and suffering from hypothermia in the cab of a rusted hunk of junk with no direction and no future.
My mind returned to our last night together and her outburst when I had photographed her from behind. What was that all about? With my pain and anxiety level in the red zone these past few days, I had totally forgotten about the tiny photo memory card residing in the change pocket of my jeans. Now I was curious to learn what I might have missed that day. Curiosity returned once again to anger.
“Dammit, Heide! Why the fuck did you do it?”
Whether it was the moisture in my eyes or the poor performance of the defroster, I needed to wipe the condensation from inside of the windshield with the saturated sleeve of my coat to see where I was going.
Less than a mile from the I-5 entrance I spotted the electronic reader board for a bar called the Beersheba with the slogan, “Where the beer is always cold and the women are hot.” It was time to regroup and consider the options, meager as they might be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“What the hell happened to you?” the guy sitting at the bar next to me asked. He wore a watch cap above a deeply lined face. I saw him eying me and the puddle of water forming beneath the bar stool suspiciously. “You look like someone shot your dog and stole your wife. Or maybe it was vice versa. Either way, you need a drink. Bartender,” he called out, “better get this man a drink before he expires.”
It was a typical sports bar so that without turning your head, you could simultaneously watch hockey and at least three basketball games.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked over the din of the crowd.
“Black Jack neat,” I replied. My teeth were chattering, making it hard to talk clearly.
“Well?” the old guy asked after I had had the first sip. “What was it? Dog or wife?”
“I had a job interview that didn’t go well,” I said.
“Let me guess: was you trying out to be a lifeguard, or maybe a deep-sea diver?” He chuckled. “Or maybe a fisherman on one of those Alaskan trawlers?” He cackled. “I swear I never saw someone looking so drowned and depressed in my life.”
I tried to smile, but my face was still so frozen I am not sure how it might have looked. I took another swallow before answering.
“Maintenance job on a farm.”
He took a drink from a long-necked beer bottle and burped before adding, “What was the problem, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Problem?” I considered. “I guess it was me.”
“That goes without sayin’, young man,” he said.
“I didn’t realize how low the compensation was.”
He turned around on his barstool so he was facing me. He took another long pull on his beer. “There was this Cherokee fellow from Oklahoma I rode with years ago. He had more colorful expressions than you could shake a stick at. ‘Keep the shiny side up.’ That kind of thing. He once told me that the difference between homeless and hopeful is a job, whether you are living on the rez or in Manhattan. Said we need to be doing something every day, no matter how menial or low-paid. It’s in our DNA.”
I savored the whiskey. In my current weary and waterlogged state, it was warming, comforting.
“If you were looking for advice, I’d recommend you get some warm food and get dried out some before giving that job another shot.” He clapped me on the shoulder, then dried his hand on his jeans.
I grimaced. “I don’t think there’s any going back. Not after the owner told me to get his property.”
“Ran you off, did he?” The old guy frowned. “Of course, another thing that crazy Indian said was, ‘Never look a dead horse in the mouth.’ I have no clue what that means, but I believe it may fit the present occasion.”
“Ready for another?” the bartender asked.
“Just my check,” I said.
“Give it to me, Bob,” the old guy said. “And bring me some more stale nuts when you got a second.”
He nodded at me. “Your turn next time.”
“Thanks,” I said. “For the drink and the advice.”
“Listen,” he said. “Long as we are talking advice, look for an open door, one that ain’t been slammed shut in your face. I hate to say it, but you are shit out of luck on that other one. Time to cross it off your list and move on to something new.” He waved his beer bottle at me. “That’s just me talkin’. Not the Indian.”
***
Tapping on the pickup truck’s window woke me from a miserable sleep. I pushed up from the well-worn seat where I had spent the past hour or so curled in a tight ball and rubbed my eyes. It was after ten p.m. according to my watch. As I rolled the window down, I was surprised to see Valerie huddled under an umbrella, looking tiny as a woodland faery in the moonless night, and the dog crouched beside her, trying to avoid the rain.
“Heard someone drive up a while back and, seeing how late it was, figured it must be you.” She held out something wrapped in tinfoil and a blanket. “Made you a sandwich and here’s something to help you stay warm.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Depends.” She wiped a wet strand of dark hair away from her face. “You stayin’ or goin’?”
“Your dad says he won’t hire me, but I thought I’d ask him to reconsider in the morning. I don’t exactly have anywhere else I need to be.”
“Breakfast is at six,” she said. “Daddy insists on bacon and eggs every morning. Come up to the house and be ready to make your case by then.” She stroked the dog between the ears. “Come on, Patsy. Let’s go in where it’s warm and dry.”
“Hey, before you go. Is he serious about six hundred dollars a month?”
“Oh, Daddy is serious about everything, but that doesn’t mean you can’t ask for more.” She smiled. “I figure you’re worth at least six-fifty.”
The dog grinned happily as she led Valerie back to the house.
CHAPTER NINE
It took several seconds to get my bearings when I woke. A robin chirped from somewhere nearby. The heavy wool blanket that Valerie had brought smell
ed of mothballs but had kept me warm. I had to wipe the condensation from the glass before I could see out the pickup truck’s windshield. Although the sun remained hidden behind the mountains, the rain had stopped, and the sky was clear. I touched my bandaged ribs. They remained tender, especially in the area where I had felt something give the day before when climbing up onto the John Deere tractor.
The pain was a constant reminder of my situation which was becoming more desperate by the day. I needed the job, but I also needed this place. The trout farm was as unlikely a place for someone on the run from a Mexican cartel to hide out as I was likely to find—especially on such short notice. Disappearing completely was the only hope I had of staying alive, but maintaining my invisibility was not entirely self-serving. If the killers managed to track me down, I could also be putting whoever I was with at risk of injury or worse.
I saw by my watch that it was nearly six. I thought about changing my shirt and decided it was not worth the pain. I figured this final attempt to convince Virgil to give me the job would have less to do with the shirt I was wearing and more with my humility and his willingness to accept my apology.
I opened the truck door and was immediately refreshed by the crisp air. I could see my breath as I labored up the gravel parking lot to the house.
I was about to knock when the door opened.
“Right on time,” Valerie said.
Even half-closed, her eyes were noticeably large and framed by long lashes. Once again, she wore denim coveralls over a long-sleeved shirt. Patsy, my new best friend, swished her tail against me happily as I followed them into the dining area.
Virgil frowned as I entered. He was seated at the head of the table. A tall, lean man wearing khakis and a blue plaid shirt looked up from his plate. He had short, brown hair, blue eyes, and was good-looking in a Nordic sort of way.
“Sit down,” Valerie said. “Have some breakfast. I made plenty for everybody.”