A Dredging in Swann

by Tim Garvin

  He hadn’t caught a fish for several hours. Which was fine, since the last one he had caught had swallowed the hook, and he had to stab its brain and cut it open to get the lure back. Now the fish, a ten-inch spot, lay butchered beside the weenies on the cooler ice, a fish formerly free to swim hither and yon in the ocean.

  An insight bloomed. The insight was that the ruthless-feeling squeamishness he felt about the fish came from Keisha, which was how life worked and how you changed selves. She warmed his heart and his whole field of mind with happy sweetness, which didn’t go with killing and also didn’t go with insanely stealing Stinger missiles and getting snared in Elton Gleen’s cold-blooded ways. They would call or come by tomorrow or the next day and Cody would say, I gave the missiles back. Do it somewhere public, so he wouldn’t get hurt. He thought he had figured out how to handle it.

  He had turned off the ringer on his phone, but now it vibrated in his pocket. It was Charlene. He thought of not answering. It would be about the paint and flowers.

  He hit the button. “Hey, Charlene.”

  “Where are you, Cody?”

  “I’m fishing.” He looked up and down the black water. No lights or motors. Still, he laid the pole down and cupped a hand around the phone.

  “Cody, what’s going on?”

  “Like what? What do you mean?”

  “Like two FBI agents just knocked on my door and wanted to talk to you.”

  “What did they say?”

  “About what, Cody? What did they say about what? What did you do?”

  Cody had the sudden fierce paranoia that his phone was bugged, or that they were standing beside Charlene, listening. He said, “Nothing.” Then he said, “Did they mention flytraps?” It made sense that he would ask that. Detective Creek said they were onto him because of flytraps. He pivoted the phone away from his mouth and inhaled.

  “Yes, they did. They wanted to know if you were still poaching flytraps.”

  “Did they search the trailer?”

  “They wanted to, but I didn’t let them. I said since you weren’t there, I didn’t feel comfortable. Good thing I put your flytraps back in the fridge, because they looked in the windows. You left them all over the kitchen table.”

  “Before they got there, you did?”

  “Yes, along with cleaning up the mess in the garage. I spent an hour scrubbing blue paint off the garage floor with turpentine. You dragged the boat right through my flowers, Cody. Why in the world would you do that?”

  So far, if they were listening, it was about flytraps. It couldn’t be about panic-dragging the boat and panic flight. He put apology into his voice. “Damn, Charlene. I’m so sorry. That paint spilled, and I just freaked I guess. I was so mad.” That was lame. It was out though. He said, “I saw Seb Creek. He said you asked him to talk to me.”

  “Cody …”

  “Also, he said Dad might have killed a kid that was working for him. Did you hear about that?”

  “It’s all over the news. But Dad didn’t kill him, for goodness’ sake. He fell into a ditch out at the farm, and it was full of deadly gas.”

  “You shouldn’t have cleaned up. I was going to do it, definitely. But I was just so mad at the time.”

  “Cody, I’m not dumb. The FBI doesn’t care about Venus flytraps.”

  “Well …” He held the phone away and breathed. He said, “What did they say?”

  “Very little. Just where were you, and did you still go in for flytraps. I said you were out fishing, and you did not. They left a card, and you’re supposed to call them. They want you to call them right away.”

  “Okay. Text me the number.”

  “What’s going on, Cody?”

  “Nothing. I bet I know what it is, Charlene. The state has got something going with the feds about endangered species. That’s what it is. Look, do this. Go get the flytraps and take them to a dumpster. Can you do that?”

  “Goddammit, Cody.”

  “Charlene, I told you I have turned the leaf, and that’s the definite truth. But help me. Can you help me? They could be coming back with a warrant.” There was a silence. His head went light and dizzy. He felt sudden relaxation. He had a thought: he could tip himself into the water and inhale and drift to the bottom and quietly die.

  “Cody, I’m not dumb. You ran out of here like the wind.”

  “I wish you hadn’t of cleaned up the paint. I’m going to replant every flower too.”

  “When are you coming in?”

  “Not long. I’m trying for some drum. I been doing pretty good.” If they checked his cooler, they would find one spot, which wasn’t pretty good, if they were listening. He said, “Please dump the flytraps. In case they get a warrant. Text me the number. Don’t worry. Everything’s good.”

  “Christ. Fine. I’ll be waiting up for you. We have to talk, Cody.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  He ended the call. He sat, numb. It was like seeing a tidal wave a mile out there, small but coming and growing and too late to run. He turned sideways, locked his feet under the bench seat, and leaned over the water. First the cold shock. Then inhale.

  He sat up and cranked the engine, then went to the bow and hauled in the anchor. His phone dinged with a text, but he did not look. He would call the FBI tomorrow, claim misunderstanding. They would probably bring him in. Where were you the night of the chopper crash? Where were you the night the missiles reappeared? They were the tidal wave. They meant to drown him. Or they would leave him clinging to a tree and recede. Wait and see. Indifference poured through him like relaxation, and behind it, center-chest, the hot longing for Keisha returned.

  Later, past midnight, Cody nosed the boat into the sand in front of the firepits. He had the sudden dismal realization that he had forgotten wood. He had remembered matches but forgotten wood and must now either forage and leave footprints and have to brush them out and maybe miss some, or else abandon the fire idea, which he could not do because it was essential to his fisherman pose. Also, he had forgotten his Ka-Bar for digging and would have to twist off a brushing branch, which meant more fuck-up chances, missed footprints, DNA on a branch, something dropped in the dark. Depressing dismalness flushed through. He got a bad marijuana craving.

  Cody pulled the boat snug, gathered his grocery bag from the bow, and went up toward the firepits to find a branch. As he neared them, he snapped his flashlight on and off to get oriented, and there, beside the left side firepit, he saw a bundle of brush, some still with leaves, and four arm-sized pieces of driftwood. He fell onto his knees in the sand and touched the small branches, then touched the driftwood, and it was like prayer, he thought, this gratitude for the unseen powers of life.

  He found a straight branch and broke it into a wiener stick, then, using pieces of newspaper he had scavenged from a 7-Eleven trash can, built the fire and lighted it. He cross-stacked the four driftwood pieces over the jumping flames. The fire would signal his innocent fisherman’s presence. They would come now if they were coming. Unless they were watching with thermal scopes, waiting to see what this unknown fisherman might do next. He roasted a weenie, then reversed the stick and toasted a bun on the other end, then clamped the weenie into the bun, doused it with ketchup, and ate it in four bites. He swigged from his water bottle. The fire had settled, was going to coals on the perimeter. He roasted another weenie and bun and ate them.

  He broke the weenie stick and burnt it, then gathered the weenies and buns and ketchup in his T-shirt and brought them back to the boat. He retrieved his Walmart bag of rags and AllGone, then walked back to the fire, nearly flameless now, then turned and walked halfway to the opposite firepit, and then he was, best guess, directly above the missile stash. He fell to his knees. He was fully trusting now, trusting to the unseen power of the universe that would either deliver him to the ones watching with thermal scopes, or free him to live and ha
ve a happy future. He dug with bare hands.

  When he was finished, he gathered the sand-heavy sleeping bag that had covered the missiles, the empty AllGone bottle and rags, and stowed everything in the bow. Then he made seven trips with the bailing pail to pour out his footprints. Then he pushed the boat off and clambered in. He made his way to the bench seat and sat and drifted away from shore into the moon-flecked calm, waiting for the search beams and the roar of boats. He drifted. He began to weep.

  The Letters

  Traffic had stalled for a half hour, but the cops finally got a wrecker through on the shoulder, and things were moving again. When Seb crawled past the wreck site, he saw the three vehicles and out of habit deduced the scenario. The VW bug somehow went sideways, a blown tire maybe or it got rear-ended. Then it was T-boned by the SUV. The box truck was behind them and unable to slow. The bug was crumpled and had tumbled down the shoulder into the woods. The truck lay on its side. The SUV was already on the wrecker bed. As he edged by, Seb caught the eye of a paramedic he knew, made an inquiring gesture. With one hand, the man cut the air near his waist and shook his head. One death at least. From the look of the collapsed VW, possibly more.

  That morning as he exercised Seb had turned on the TV news. Another bomb had gone off in Baghdad. The camera showed a crowd of Iraqis, men and kids mostly, but also women in burqas, milling at the perimeter of the wreckage, talking together, gesturing, some with cell phones. Their faces were blank. They seemed simply curious, like tourists, which in a sense they were. It was not their bomb or their deaths. No doubt invisible streams of grief were radiating through the city, but here, in this aftermath crowd, these at least had not died. They had gathered near the blackened cars and slumped building fronts to witness and absorb.

  At the beach, he had worked on the song but not been able to sleep and had gone back to his apartment. His Mia gloom persisted through the morning and now, as he passed the wrecks, suddenly lifted. It was not just that there was life on both sides of death, it was that no one dies in his own life. Others die in theirs. So bravery. Then more bravery.

  He fished his phone from his jeans pocket, surfed to Ahmad.

  After five rings, Ahmad said, “Seb, my dawg.” The voice was raspy loud, almost a shout. Behind the voice, Seb heard the chomping and gnashing of machinery.

  “Ahmad, let’s do a song.”

  “No shit?”

  “The lyrics are pretty much done. It’s a heart-rending love song, man.”

  “Heart-rending? That sounds pretty white.”

  “We get the singers doing some kind of backup. Some kind of talkback or something. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Let’s do it, dawg. Give me the first line, let me get the line length.”

  Seb recited, “I used to be afraid of love, I hid my fear in pride.”

  “That’s definitely white.”

  “I happen to be white.”

  “We might could black it up.”

  “We could.”

  “When can I get it?”

  “I’ll send it today.”

  “Beautiful, man. Say it again.”

  Seb repeated the line.

  Ahmad said, “I got it. I’m a get to work on it today. I’m crushing, but I got my box right here. I might slip some car-crushing sounds behind it.”

  “Do your thing, Ahmad. What it is, it’s a love song for this girl I know.”

  “The one you left the meeting for?”

  “Yes. It’s kind of a make-up song. Kind of an I’m-sorry song.”

  “You fucked up?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Don’t worry about it. This girl is cooked. She got no hope.”

  When he reached Pilcher Cemetery, he found the gathering had moved from the chapel into the graveyard. More than thirty people, all black, all in their Sunday clothes, had gathered at the grave and its mound of fresh earth. The casket was suspended above the cavity on two wooden planks. He watched as the minister gave the sign and eight men came forward to man the lowering straps. As they lifted, the minister and a young woman pulled away the planks, and the casket was haltingly lowered, with discreet discussion, by the eight men. When the straps were retrieved, a procession began moving past, some using the shovel to toss earth into the grave, some their bare hands.

  The crowd began to file back to the chapel and parking lot. Seb stood on a grassy strip between two graves, nodding noncommittally to their polite glances. Last to leave were the minister and the family, Virginia Rubins, her three children, all boys, and her mother, June. Virginia said to the minister, “Dr. Packard, will you kindly take the boys ahead, and we’ll be coming up?”

  The minister murmured, and he and the boys continued toward the chapel.

  Virginia and Seb smiled and nodded to each other. Virginia said, “Mama, this is Detective Creek.”

  June was a small woman. She wore a silky black dress and peered up at Seb under a black straw hat decorated with fabric flowers. She was in her late sixties, but her small face and neck were already rippled as a walnut. Her thin mouth made a quick smile without showing teeth.

  Seb took her extended hand and said, “Sorry for your loss, Ms. … I believe I do not know your last name.”

  “My name is Ms. Carson.” Despite the aged appearance, the voice was clear and businesslike.

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Carson. I have been wanting to speak with you. If this is not the right time …”

  “This is a fine time because here we are, and our duty is done. What do you want to ask?”

  “Mostly I want to ask whether there is anything you can tell me about the murder of Hugh Britt, anything that was not public at the time.”

  “You going back to Hugh Britt in case Leo was killed, and it had to do with it? So you for sure think someone killed Leo?”

  “Sorry to say I do.”

  “Why?”

  “The way we found him didn’t make sense unless someone else did it.”

  Virginia said, “I told Mama I didn’t think so either.”

  Ms. Carson said, “I can’t say nothing about back then. It was all in the papers, and I was just a girl at home with my babies.”

  “Any idea why Ms. Ford named him in her will?”

  “None whatever. I don’t listen to talk neither.”

  “Did you happen to know a man named Squint Cooper?”

  “Heard the name. Don’t know the man.”

  Virginia said, “Why? Who is he?”

  “Just someone I been talking to, trying to sort things out. He’s an old-timer like Ms. Carson.”

  “Young man, I look more old-timer than I am. I’m a young-timer.”

  “I’m sure you are. Well, I won’t take any more of your time. I have come, as I expect Virginia has told you, about the letters. I’m particularly interested in any letters he sent you after he was released. Did he contact you?”

  June lifted her head and shook it slowly. “He was a faithful man in that. I’m sorry to tell you I have decided against it.”

  As Seb framed a reply, Virginia said, “Mr. Creek, Mama has buried the letters with my daddy.”

  “Really? You put them in the coffin?”

  Ms. Carson said, “I did, and here come the burying man to put it all back in the earth. Where we all going and will meet again, Mr. Creek. And it all get sorted then.”

  The burial machine, a four-legged octopus with a massive bivalve bucket, was slowly pacing down a grassy corridor toward the open grave.

  “Ms. Carson, did you happen to read any of his last letters?”

  “I stopped long ago. I let the past die.” She pointed a finger toward the grave, and her head jerked in a nod. “That man buried there is past caring, and we got to be past caring too. I’m the one at stake here, and I’m past caring. Let him lie in peace until it all get sorted.”
>
  She nodded, then turned and proceeded toward the chapel.

  Virginia said, “I’m sorry. Mr. Creek. She has her certain ways.” She started to follow her mother.

  Seb touched her arm. “What will happen now is I’ll get a court order, and we’ll have to dig him back up.”

  “Those are heartache letters. They won’t solve a murder.”

  “They might.” The octopus had reached the grave and was positioning its tentacles. “Give me permission to retrieve the letters from the coffin. That’s all I need.”

  “My verbal permission is all you need?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Please say it.”

  “I give you permission to get those letters. From my daddy’s casket.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be very respectful.”

  “Please do.” She gave him a soft direct look. “You will not kick dirt on my daddy.”

  “I will not.” Seb saw the octopus clamp its jaws into the hill of earth beside the grave. He ran, waving his hands.

  The Testament

  Seb heard a racket of squealing as he entered the hog house and found Squint making another red paddle wade through the hogs.

  Seb watched him scissor over the pen bars, then swing the paddle over his shoulders and drape his arms. He said, “Manuel quit me. I’m all alone unless I get some help, if I ever do. You look grim. If you want to talk, keep up.” He swung the paddle down and carried it into the bright morning.

  Seb followed. They started down the grassy slope toward the generator shed and the perimeter of yellow tape. Seb said to his back, “I been wondering if I got Jorge killed.”

  Squint stopped. They faced each other.

  Seb said, “Then I thought, no, you had that planned, which is why you had to show up at the sports bar. You had to show me the video, make sure to tell me it was Jorge in the blue van. So he was dead from go. That’s cold, Squint.”