Lone Creek

by Neil Mcmahon

Madbird acted like he hadn’t heard me. He strolled over to the remains of the fire and paced around its perimeter, here and there nudging a clump of wood with his boot toe, each time releasing another cloud of charred dust to crawl up into my nostrils—little reminders that I wasn’t the guy who’d started this trouble.

  When he came full circle, he looked straight at me and gave me that grin.

  “You can’t go leaving me half jacked off,” he said. “That’d hurt my feelings.”

  I made the same walk around the fire, kicking at chunks and thinking. Some of the embers were still warm.

  “All right, let’s take another drive,” I said. “Maybe I’ve got something to show you, but maybe things turn out like last night—it’s not there. If you don’t see it, you’re out of this.”

  We took his van again We wouldn’t be trespassing this time, but my truck was the kind of vehicle that people might remember or even recognize.

  Disposing of a corpse wasn’t an easy thing to do, I had started to realize. Burying, burning, submerging, every method like that had some weak point that was vulnerable to discovery. Trying to increase the safety net required significant time and preparation. I didn’t have a D-8 Cat and several thousand acres of private land handy, and Gary Varna was breathing down my neck.

  I’d done my best to cover my tracks last night, starting by transferring the beer cans and pistol to Kirk’s Jeep, then driving it half a mile farther along the lakeshore and dumping it over a cliff where the water was twenty feet deep. It made a pretty good splash. Sooner or later it would be found, but time and damage would be on my side.

  I’d jogged back, shoveled up all the bloody earth I could find and thrown it in the lake, and scattered loose dirt and brush to make the site look undisturbed. It wouldn’t fool search dogs, but unless he’d told someone exactly where he was going, there’d be no reason to look there.

  Then I’d turned to Kirk. Especially in my frantic rush, I couldn’t come up with anything smart. The single thing I most wanted to avoid was leaving a scent trail to my place that dogs might be able to follow, so I decided to take him in another direction. I had no choice but to carry him in my truck bed, but I wrapped him up good in a nylon tarp, and figured I’d slosh gasoline around the bed when I got home, as if it had spilled. Any scent that came through would be faint, and I could say he’d hopped in for a lift at the ranch a while back. Before I got inside the truck, I changed into spare clothes and boots and stuffed the old ones in a duffel. Later, I scrubbed myself as clean as I could in the shower, and took the final precaution of fishing through my dirty clothes for jeans and a gray T-shirt like the ones I’d been wearing earlier. I smeared them with ashes from the fire, as substitutes for the ones that were soaked with Kirk’s blood.

  Those I’d stashed temporarily along with his body, a couple of miles up an abandoned logging road the next gulch over. The area was national forest, empty of habitation and generally deserted. But hunting season would start soon, with sharp-eyed men scanning the brush closely, and there were occasional hikers with dogs. If I left him where he was now, critters would scatter body parts and bones, making discovery likely.

  Digging a grave deep enough for security would take several hours; and in this kind of stillness, the sound of metal hitting stone could carry for a mile or more. If someone heard it—say, a forest ranger or game warden—they’d come to find out who was excavating on national forest land. Trying to take him someplace else left all the same problems and added the risks of transportation.

  When Madbird and I got to the spot, I was still coming up empty.

  We parked the van and I led him into the brush to where I’d carried my burden a few hours earlier. I knelt beside Kirk’s head, loosened the tarp’s folds, and pulled them out of the way.

  Madbird gazed down at the pale face and slashed neck, raggedly streaked with congealed blood. Then he knelt, too, and lightly pushed Kirk’s eyelids closed with his fingertips.

  “You better understand something, Hugh,” he said. “You just walked into a different world. Ain’t nothing ever going to be the same again.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “How’s it looking?” I said.

  Madbird leaned back and eyed the cliff face critically. We were dangling ten feet down into a little coulee, roped to a tree, wearing the harnesses we used for bridge work. Kirk was wedged upright into a fissure in front of us, covered with a mixture of sticky foam insulation, dirt, and rocks several inches thick.

  “You missed a spot over by his left ear,” Madbird said. “The rest ain’t bad.”

  I got another can of foam from the sack hanging off my belt and popped the seal. The gunk came out in a thin rope like toothpaste from a tube and quickly swelled to several times that size, an expansion that was powerful enough to bow window and doorjambs. I filled the divot and packed it with soil to match the surroundings.

  He grunted OK. “I’ll throw you some brush,” he said, and hauled himself up his rope hand over hand.

  This time he hadn’t just helped me out. He’d flat saved my ass—sized up the situation, muttered that if the old downtown bars were still open we could just set Kirk on a stool and nobody would ever notice, then drove us to town for a quick supply run. When we got back we carried Kirk half a mile farther into the woods, lowered him over the cliff, and started foaming him in.

  I took the handfuls of brush and duff that Madbird dropped down to me and created a tangled little deadfall in the narrow cleft above Kirk’s head. Then Madbird trotted around to a vantage point and gave me directions while I dusted the foam once more with scree, trying to make it look like the natural result of years of rain and erosion. Within an hour it would harden like lightweight concrete, and hold its shape after the flesh decomposed. Big animals wouldn’t have any perch for digging him out, and varmints or ravens weren’t likely to chew their way through several inches of toxic polyurethane embedded with rocks. The foam dried to about the same color as the soil, so any that showed through would barely be noticeable. The rare human who might happen along would see only another debris-choked crevice in a cliff. An earthquake might shake him loose, but this wasn’t earthquake country. I was willing to take my chances there.

  When we got back to Madbird’s van we spent a couple of minutes trying to scrub hardened foam off ourselves, without much luck. You couldn’t walk across the street from the stuff without getting it all over you, and although we’d worn rubber gloves and long-sleeved shirts, it had managed to sneak inside them. Gasoline or WD-40 would cut most kinds of gunk pretty well, but it barely touched the top layer of this stuff. The rest came off only with your skin.

  But that was only a nuisance. The really bad part had been facing Kirk from only a foot or two away while we’d walled him in. We’d kept him wrapped in the tarp to avoid getting scent on us, but I’d felt him as clearly as if I could see through it. Neither Madbird nor I had suggested turning him around. That would have been like burying somebody facedown in a coffin.

  It was starting to come home to me that I had made a living human being dead—someone I’d known all my life. I’d pitied him more than I liked him, but in some strange way, that almost made it worse.

  I screwed the top back onto the red plastic gas container and stowed it in the rear of the van.

  Then, out of nowhere, I started crying. Blubbering like a little kid.

  After a minute or so I was better. I blew some snot onto the ground and got my eyes clear. Madbird was leaning against the van with his arms folded.

  “You go a ways up in them mountains, there’s a place nobody much knows about,” he said. His right hand extended, forefinger pointing northward. Something about the gesture suggested a distance that wasn’t measurable on a map. “It ain’t exactly what you’d call a burial ground, but people been going there a long time to take care of their dead. My mother and my stepbrother Robert, my first wife and our little girl that got meningitis—their ashes are hanging from a tree in leather bags. We can go there
some day if you want.”

  He spoke casually, still not looking at me. He’d never mentioned this before.

  Still shaky, I said, “I’d be honored.”

  He finally turned to me. I’d never seen his face like that—gentle, patient, with a hint of things he’d been through that I couldn’t begin to fathom.

  “If you’re feeling sorry for him, remember he tried to kill you first,” Madbird said. “From behind.”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t just sorrow for Kirk or for myself that I was feeling. It was a much vaster grief, for all of this that was happening and for everything else like it that ever had.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  We took my bloody clothes from last night to a creek a good mile away, soaked them with gasoline, and burned them to ashes, then dissolved the ashes in the swiftly flowing water. There were a few things left—my knife and belt buckle, some grommets from my boots and the rubbery residue of their soles, and Kirk’s camcorder. I’d almost dumped that along with the Jeep, but then realized that experts might be able to recover its images, and there just might be something that would point to me. But I checked it while the clothes were burning, and the only footage was that brief scene of Laurie Balcomb in the creek. I doubted her husband knew that Kirk had done his job of shadowing her so thoroughly.

  I pounded the camcorder to small pieces with a hammer and washed them and the other nonflammable stuff clean of blood and fingerprints. Then I took it all down into a thickly brush-choked draw and foamed it into a rockpile like we’d done with Kirk. I kicked a small landslide over the site for good measure, and headed back.

  I was sure I’d left loose ends in spite of all my caution, and without doubt the investigation would soon come around to me in a serious way. But this was going to have to do it for now.

  Madbird and I drove home.

  He followed me through the trees to my cabin, this time carrying the old lever-action 30-30 he kept in his van. I trotted in a crouch to the windows and peered inside. Everything seemed the same as when I’d left. I turned to him and raised my hand. He saluted, and then he was gone. Neither of us had said much more. It was like we’d been on a fishing trip instead of doing what we’d done. But I knew he was thinking the same thing I was—that it would be best if we didn’t hang around together for a while.

  It was a little before one o’clock. The afternoon had taken on a hazy warmth. But when I stepped inside the cabin, it felt so cold and lifeless that I stopped in the doorway. I hadn’t ever fired up the woodstove last night, and the log walls held in the chill. I’d never finished making that coffee for Gary Varna, either. The unheated kettle was still sitting by the sink.

  I closed the door and walked back out to a big wind-twisted Doug fir that was probably the oldest living thing on the place. The sun was obscured by light clouds that might signal coming rain, but it showed as a ragged yellowish blur behind them. I sat on my heels facing it, with my back up against the fir. I’d started doing this after the end of my marriage and that previous life that had gone along with it. Eventually, I’d realized that it was an unconscious attempt to soak up energy, sandwiching my body between the sun in front and the tree behind, in the hope that this would trickle-charge some internal battery that was drained dry. The warmth always felt good and sometimes it seemed to help in other ways, but not today.

  That grief was still with me, but I was starting to wake up to the reality of what Madbird had pointed out. My notion that I might have falsely accused Balcomb had vaporized. I was certain that he’d sent Kirk to kill me. He didn’t know what had happened to Kirk, but he’d have realized from talking to Gary Varna early this morning that something had gone wrong. Dropping the charges against me was another of his smoke screens, a way to establish his ignorance of the murder attempt and to keep me off guard.

  There were a couple of spin-offs. First, whatever was behind the slaughter of those horses was worth killing for.

  Second, Wesley Balcomb was still alive and no doubt still wanted me dead. He would try again. My luck had been twisting and turning, but it had come through for me big-time last night. I couldn’t keep counting on it.

  I’d be crazy to hang around like a sitting duck. But if I left town, with Gary Varna as suspicious as he was already, it would be taken as an admission of guilt for Kirk’s disappearance. The law would damned sure find me, I’d go back to jail, and my little cover-up scheme would be put under the kind of scrutiny that would rip it apart.

  I got an armload of split larch and kindling from the woodshed and carried it to the cabin. This time I made it all the way through the door and saw that the phone machine light was blinking.

  The voice was Sarah Lynn’s, agitated to the point of trembling.

  “Hugh, Gary Varna just left here. He said Kirk Pettyjohn’s gone missing, and he wanted to know when you were here last night and how you seemed, and all that. What’s going on? Call me.”

  The little man in the phone machine said the call had come at 8:47 AM. Gary had left here about eight. That meant he’d gone straight to her place.

  And that meant he was real interested in checking out my story.

  I started to punch Sarah Lynn’s number, but then hesitated. Rationally, I felt justified about the deceiving I’d done so far, but my gut didn’t like it, and lying straight out to her about killing a man we’d both grown up with would be excruciating. I knew I was going to have to do it and keep on doing it, not just with her, but with other people who trusted me. But not just yet.

  I made a small fire in the stove to break the chill. My belly was reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday. My mind wasn’t interested, but my body demanded food. I dumped a can of corned beef hash into a frying pan and put it on the hot plate, then rummaged for something to go with it. I usually did my laundry and grocery shopping on Sunday mornings, and right now I was out of just about everything. The best I could come up with was a couple of bread heels and half a bag of stale potato chips. I put the bread in the toaster oven and got out cream cheese and Tabasco sauce from the refrigerator. I filled the kettle with fresh water and put it on the hot plate’s other burner, ground up some coffee beans, and shook the powder into a filter cone to make myself a good strong cup.

  The cabin was warming up, but it felt small and close. When the hash finished browning, I opened the door and ate standing up there, facing the quiet vista of forest and mountains.

  The smell of the burned lumber was still hanging in the air, faintly disturbing—and it brought to light another of those slivers festering under the surface of my consciousness.

  I’d taken it for granted that Kirk had set the fire and lied to me about it. But it must have started about dusk—right when he said he’d reburied the horses. That would have taken him a while, and the drive from the ranch to my place was close to half an hour. It would have been physically impossible for him to have gotten here that soon. Maybe he’d buried the horses earlier and lied about the timing, too. But I couldn’t see any reason for that, and it made sense that he’d have waited till dark. I was concerned because if someone else had burned the wood—like Doug Wills, getting revenge for our fight—Gary Varna might find out I hadn’t and I’d be caught in a lie really touchy to explain.

  I was just finishing lunch when I heard a car coming up the road. I stayed in the doorway until I could get a glimpse. It was a small, off-white, fairly new sedan, not a sheriff’s cruiser and not a vehicle I recognized as belonging to anybody I knew.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I didn’t think someone bent on harm would broadcast his presence like that, but I’d thought the same thing about Kirk, and the car might even be a shill for someone else approaching on foot. I’d brought my father’s pistol back into the cabin but it wouldn’t do me much good except at close range, and I never wanted another face-to-face confrontation again. I pulled the door most of the way shut and strode to my gun safe. I knew the combination like high school kids knew their lockers’, and within thirty sec
onds, I had my Model 70 elk rifle out.

  I stepped to the door again, staying to one side, and jacked a round into the chamber. The car was just pulling up to my gate, about fifty yards away. The driver was a man, alone. I could see him lean forward in the seat, like he was reading the numbers on my mailbox, before he got out.

  The rifle’s scope gave me a clear look at him. I’d never seen him before any more than I had the car, and he was just as nondescript—my age or a little older, wearing glasses, clean-shaven, and neatly dressed. A bow tie added a prim, even nerdy touch.

  Then I saw that he was carrying a nine-by-twelve mailer envelope, like the kind UPS and FedEx used, but colored yellow and green. I recognized it as being from XP-DITE, a local courier, the kind that ferried parcels and car parts around town. He squinted at the cabin like he was trying to decide whether to open the gate and come on up. But then he put the envelope in the mailbox, hung a tag on it, and drove away.

  For two or three more minutes I stayed where I was, scanning the woods through the cabin’s windows and wondering who in hell would have sent me an express package at all, let alone on a Sunday. Nothing moved that I could see except the tag on the mailbox, fluttering listlessly in the breeze.

  I started down there as if I was sneaking up on game, half-crouched, ready to drop prone and shoot. Forty feet short of the gate, I stopped. After another long look around, I picked up a rock and chunked it at the mailbox. I felt like an asshole, but an envelope could hold enough explosives to blow somebody to bits.

  I threw like an asshole, too. It took me five tries to connect with a good solid thunk. Nothing happened, not that that was any guarantee. I walked the rest of the way and cautiously pulled the mailbox door open. A few letters from yesterday were still there, a couple of flyers, and some other junk, with the XP-DITE envelope on top. My name and address were typed on a label. There was no return.