Mickey
“Who wrote this?” I ask, staring down at the words I can’t believe actually exist or that they were just sitting on the passenger seat of Pike’s truck. “A Kidnapper’s Commandments?”
Pike sighs and turns the wheel. We hit a pothole, and I crush the pages in my hand. “A friend of mine wrote it. He’s…been through some shit.”
“Clearly,” I reply, shaking the crinkled pages at him. So, his friends are just like him. Apparently, kidnapping is such a regular thing with them that he found the need to write out guidelines.
“You think that’s bad, you should see the fucking kit,” Pike remarks, rolling down his window and lighting a cigarette.
Realizing I have no idea where we’re going, I grow nervous. “Is this when you start using me as bait?”
“No, that will start back at the pawn shop. I’ll have you sit in the storefront with Thorne. People talk in this town, and if I’m right, then they’ll talk about you. The more people talk, the more word gets around, the more likely your people will know you’re alive and be coming for you.” He looks over at me. “And I’ll be ready.”
“They’re not my people,” I mutter.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Absolutely nothing,” I grumble, staring out the window as the road we’re on grows narrower and the buildings fewer and farther between the we drive further away from Logan’s Beach. Soon, I’m feeling claustrophobic as overgrown brush reaches out from both sides, as if frozen in the middle of trying to swallow us whole.
One of the truck tires dips into a large pothole. I grab hold onto the ‘oh shit’ handle above me to protect my head from colliding with the headliner. “Where are you taking me?” I ask, feeling more and more unease. We’ve long passed civilization and are entering what looks like banjo country.
Pike turns off the sparsely paved road onto a dirt one that’s even bumpier. My butt lifts off then slams back down on the seat several times. We pass under a canopy of trees arching across the road above our heads. Through the leaves, the setting sun twinkles like a thousand pink and orange stars, shedding beauty on an otherwise ominous moment.
“Gotta meet someone,” Pike replies, looking out the windshield appearing lost in thought.
“Why are you taking me with you?”
“What’s with all of the fucking questions?” he asks.
“Maybe, you’re not the only one who likes to torture people?” I say sarcastically.
That earns me an eyeroll and a twitch of his lips which I’m learning he does when he’s trying not to smile. “Because after the knife bullshit, I don’t trust you not to try shit, and I can’t have you trying to stab the help during business hours.”
I shrug. His reasonings aren’t off the mark. I would do the same if I were him. Although, he doesn’t have to know that I wouldn’t stab Thorne. Unless, of course, she tried to stab me first. In which case, game on.
Pike parks the truck in the middle of the road and gets out.
“What if someone wants to pass us?” I call after him.
He doesn’t turn around. “Nobody comes out here,” he replies.
Nobody comes out here.
Pike turns around and sees I’m not following. “You coming, or you gonna stay here and get eaten by the critters?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s better than going with you and getting fed to the critters,” I argue.
Pike strides over to me and lifts my chin with his fingers. I jerk it away. “If I wanted to kill you…”
I raise my eyebrows.
“If I wanted to kill you today, I have a thousand spots better than this to dump your little body, and besides, you’d already be dead before I dragged you all the way out here.”
If his words are meant to comfort me, they fail. “Why would I already be dead?” I ask, seeking a logical answer to his absurd statement.
Pike answers as if it’s obvious and he can’t believe he has to explain this to me. “No one wants to drive all the way out here to a place like this with a screamer in the trunk.” He turns and walks down a narrow path
I hesitate, looking around. The sun is almost set, and the bugs are chirping and buzzing all around me. A toad croaks. An owl hoots. A coyote…shit.
I jog to catch up to Pike who chuckles under his breath. I don’t want to admit it, but the situation is funny, if only because it’s also ridiculous. I’m voluntarily seeking safety from the critters and creatures with Pike, of all people, when running into a field of coyotes would probably be the safer choice. But even logical people have illogical moments, and obviously this is one of mine, and one of many when it comes to Pike.
“Who, exactly, are you meeting out in the middle of nowhere?” I ask, wondering what type of person would come out here of their own free will.
Well, besides Pike.
Pike pauses as we come to a small clearing with a shallow swamp-like pond in the middle surrounded by tall grass. “That’s who.” He points to a man standing on an airboat about twenty feet away.
Dirt covers the man’s sunken cheeks along with his overalls and what I assume used to be a white tank top underneath. He spots us and smiles, accentuating the wrinkles around his tanned and leathery lips and eyes. A smattering of long white whiskers hangs from a pointed chin. He covers his lips with his index finger indicating that we should be quiet then looks down with determination to something at the bow of the boat. He doesn’t look like a person in the middle of the swamp, but more like a part of it. Like a frog or tree. He’s just supposed to be here.
I strain my neck to see what it is that has the man so fixated, but I can’t see anything in front of the boat. “What’s he doing?”
“Just watch,” Pike whispers.
The man grabs what looks like a paint roller stick but without the roller part on the metal hook. After a few motionless minutes, he suddenly stabs it into a patch of tall grass. I startle at the sudden movement. He kneels and grabs something with his hand, his muscles tight with the exertion it takes to do whatever it is he’s doing. Dropping the paint stick, he reaches his now free hand to grab a burlap sack.
He rises up and begins to feed something into the bag. A very big and long slithering something.
“Is that a…snake?” I ask, noticing the shiny beige, brown, and yellow pattern on its skin.
“Python!” the man announces triumphantly. I guess we don’t have to be quiet anymore. His smile reveals a missing front tooth.
A python? I search my brain for any files on pythons, and the only bit of information I come up with is that they aren’t native to this area.
“That’s Gutter,” Pike explains.
He continues to feed the snake's body into the bag for what seems like an eternity. It has to be at least twelve feet long. It’s thick, too. My hands wouldn’t even touch if I grabbed it. I shudder at the thought of actually laying my hands on it, and I’m relieved when the snake is fully in the bag. He ties it up and places the bag inside yet another bag, tying it shut at the top, but he’s not done yet. He grabs a back roll of electrical tape, wrapping it around the bag several times before cutting it with his teeth and setting the snake inside a square containment area at the front of the boat. Gutter then turns a handle on the trolling motor of the boat and makes his way toward us, beaching the boat on the mud only a foot or two away.
Gutter plops down at the edge of the boat and greets us with a slight tip of the brim of his ball cap. Now that he’s closer, I can read what it says, Willie Nelson 2020.
I lean over the edge of the boat and glance at the bag containing the snake, fascinated with why it’s there and the expertise in which Gutter had caught him. I have a million questions filling my mind, yet I’m not sure which to start with. All I know is that I need information more than I need to breathe.
Gutter snaps his fingers. “Oh, I almost forgot something.” He takes a sheet of paper out of the front pocket of his overalls and peels something from it, slapping it over t
he tape on the bag. It’s a sticker with his picture on it. He’s smiling and doing a double thumbs up. The caption below reads BAGGED AND TAGGED BY GUTTER. DANGEROUS REPTILE INSIDE. “That’s my third one today, and it’s a whopper, too.”
“Three of them?” I gasp then look around my feet. “How many are out here?”
The man shrugs. “Here in the Everglades?” He scratches the long wiry whiskers on his chin. “Hundreds of thousands, I reckon.”
“But pythons aren’t native to Southwest Florida…” I muse.
Gutter smiles, and gives Pike a look that says he’s impressed. “You’re right. They ain’t native, and they’ve got no real predators to thin them out. People just started dumping them out here when they got too big to keep as pets. I even saw one trying to swallow a decent-sized gator a while back. Anyway, Uncle Sam pays a pretty penny for each one I bring in.”
That’s nice and all, but my thoughts are still stuck on Hundreds of thousands.
Pike lights a cigarette. “Selling out with a government job after all, huh, Gutter?” .
Gutter rolls his eyes. “Fuck you, Pike. Everyone around these parts knows I ain’t no government employee and won’t ever be.” He spits on the ground next to his feet to punctuate his point. “Just benefiting off the fuckers for shit I’d do even if they wasn’t paying me to do it.”
“Whatever lets you sleep at night, buddy.” Pike pats him on the shoulder, and Gutter slaps his hand away. Whatever the relationship is between the men, it’s a comfortable one. I don’t imagine Pike wouldn’t retaliate a slap from someone he wasn’t comfortable with, no matter how playful it was indented.
Gutter looks at me, crosses his arm over his chest, and then dips into a dramatic bow. “And who might this beautiful young lady be?” he asks, standing straight he throws me a wink.
“Mickey, this is Gutter. Gutter, this is Mickey.”
“Mickey, like the mouse?” he teases.
I smile, but I can’t help it. Gutter’s personality is either infectious, or I’m in dire need of human contact that isn’t tied in a knot of threats. “Mickey like Michaela, but yeah, also like the mouse.”
Gutter scratches his chin. “Michaela works better for me. Never did care for that mouse being as that Disney feller was a fuckin’ Nazi,” he says, like it’s common knowledge.
“Really?” Pike scoffs. “You gotta drag Walt Disney’s name into the mud?”
“It’s true,” I say in Gutter’s defense.
Pike raises his eyebrows.
I explain. “It’s a known fact that Disney attended meetings of a pro-Nazi organization in the 1930’s, and it’s rumored that he and entertained Himmler, Hitler’s second in command, at Disney World when it first opened, although that’s never been proven. So, Gutter’s not entirely wrong although.” I look to Gutter. “No offense, not entirely right either.”
“None taken!” he says cheerily. “I like this girl, Pike. Feel free to bring her out here more often. Now, tell me your thoughts on that feller in Hollywood that I know is a secret Russian spy.”
“Who?” I ask, not knowing who he could be talking about.
Gutter purses his lips. “That no good John Stamos, that’s who.”
I laugh and look over Gutter’s shoulder to Pike whose lip is doing the twitchy thing again. “I haven’t heard anything about him, but I’ll let you know if I do.”
“You do that, kid.” He slaps Pike on the shoulder. “Now, what brings the likes of you all the fuckin’ way out here to see an old feller like me?”
Pike lights another cigarette and hands one to Gutter who takes it with a thankful nod. “Much obliged, young man.”
Gutter looks from Pike to me, then back to Pike again. “You out here to dump a body?” He points at me with his cigarette. “‘Cause she still looks a bit alive, so I think yer fuckin’ this one up, kid. And she’s too pretty to feed to the gators.” He flashes me a wink.
Pike rolls his eyes. “I’m here to bring you this.” He passes an envelope to Gutter who then tucks it into his pocket. “You ain’t need to be doin’ this all the time, kid. We’ve been over this.”
Pike scoffs. “I don’t need to do any of the shit I do. It don’t stop me from doing it.”
Gutter chuckles. “The fucking apocalypse couldn’t stop you when you set your mind to something, kid. I should know better by now.”
Gutter hands me a beer. I sit on the edge of the boat as Pike and Gutter tinker with his motor. “Don’t let yer limbs dangle,” Gutter says, coming to sit beside me. “Unless you got boots on like these,” he taps the scuffed white plastic boots that cover the legs of his overalls all the way to his knees. “That’s how we catch gators, by hanging the bait over the water.”
Pike flashes me an amused look.
“Good to know,” I mutter, lifting my feet onto the boat. I cross my legs underneath me, tucking them in tight.
Pike is still tinkering with the motor, occasionally swearing under his breath when Gutter takes a seat beside me.
“Have you known Pike long?” I ask, taking a swig of my cold beer. The bubbles tickle my throat on the way down.
Gutter nods. “Yep. Since before he sprouted hair on his balls. Found his little skinny ass shivering in the reeds one night, and although I kept telling the runt not to come back––” he points behind his shoulder with his beer bottle. “––obviously the kid don’t listen for shit.”
No, he doesn’t. I look at Pike who has removed his shirt. His muscles strain and flex as he works on the motor, his skin gleaming with sweat, making his tattoos look animated under the light of the moon. I shiver, and it’s probably the drip from the condensation on the bottle falling onto my leg because that’s the only thing it could be.
Gutter nudges my shoulder, bringing me back from my thoughts. “Sorry, I’m just trying to picture Pike ever being little, skinny, or a runt.”
He chuckles. “Sure, that’s what you were doing.”
I take another sip of my beer, trying to cover my blush with the bottle.
“Pike’s a good kid. He can be a terrible human being but a good fuckin kid.” Gutter says although I’m not sure what distinguishes the two. “The two aren’t separate.”
“I haven’t seen a lot of the good side,” I admit.
“You’re alive, ain’t ya?” Gutter asks. “You’re on it if you ask me.”
“Only because I’m a part of his dastardlier plans,” I argue.
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.” Gutter takes the envelope that Pike had given him out of his pocket and hands it to me.
I turn it over in my hands. “What is this?”
Gutter points with his eyes to the envelope. “That’s the thing about envelopes. You have to open them to find out.”
It isn’t sealed, the flap just folded inside. I tug it free. I’m not sure what I expect to find, but when I pull out the contents. It’s money, and not just a little. There has to be at least a few thousand dollars’ worth of hundreds inside. I tuck the flap back in and hand it to Gutter. He opens it again, removing something from behind the bills before again tucking it safely into the pocket of his overalls.
“So, he gives you money?” I ask, stating the obvious and not asking the more important question of why.
Gutter takes a swig of his beer, then tosses it back into the boat behind him. He reaches for two more from the cooler and pops the tops of both, pushing one into my hand. “Pike’s been giving me money for years. He says it’s a debt he’s paying on account of me saving his life or some shit, but I can’t get him to stop. Even threatened to burn it once, and he threatened to buy me a damned house if I didn’t keep it.” He sighs and looks to his hands where he’s holding what I can see now is a picture. “But this here isn’t about a debt.” He hands me the picture. It’s of a woman and a man holding a baby in their arms. “It’s about kindness, even though the lord knows I don’t deserve it.”
The couple looks to be in their late twenties. They’re smiling down at
the baby between them with love shining in their eyes. “Who are they?”
He points to the picture. “That, there, is my daughter, Edie and her husband, Glen. That’s my granddaughter, Julia.” He rubs a dirt caked finger over her little chubby face. “I did a lot of bad shit in my life. Not to them specifically, but it affected them for sure.” Gutter sighs, his voice laced in regret. “Dumb shit that cost me my little girl.” He waves his hand dismissing his emotions, explaining with a simple, “There was no contact order and such in place back then. Haven’t spoken a word to her since she was eight years old.”
My logic requires me to ask the obvious question. “Why don’t you try and make contact?”
Gutter shakes his head. “That boat sunk a long time ago, and it takes a man to know when the people he loves are truly better without him. But these pictures…” He smiles down at it once more. “They make an old man happy to know that they’re okay. That they’re happy. Even if I had nothing to do with that happiness.”
I open my mouth to argue, feeling the need to tell him something that would make him feel better, but Gutter holds up his hands, cutting me off before I can get a word out. “I’m not saying that for a rebuttal or for flattery, kiddo. I’m not a goddamned democrat. I’m saying it because it’s true.”
“So, Pike brings you pictures of your family…?” It’s not quite a question.
Gutter looks back at Pike who wipes the sweat from his brow with his forearm. He casts a quick glance our way before kneeling back over the motor.
“One day, I told him I’d like to see them again, not in person because it’s best not to drag the past out of the swamp out of season, but maybe in a picture. I don’t have the internets out here, and I’m not about to go somewhere and sign up for the social medias and have the fucking Russians monitor my every fucking move.” He gives a middle finger to the sky.
I raise an eyebrow.
“Russian satellites,” he explains.
“So, he prints pictures out from social media and brings them to you?”
Gutter chuckles, “Something like that.” He tucks the picture back in his pocket and pats the fabric. “He don’t need to bring me no goddamned money, but this...this is like bringing an old man back a little piece of his broken heart.”
Pike: The Pawn Duet, Book One Page 10