Peckerwood

by Jedidiah Ayres

  “Jim, why don’t you come in here and have a seat.”

  “What the hell, Bob?” He went into his office and Musil closed the door behind them. “What’s going on?”

  Musil stood at the door as if checking to make sure no one was listening outside. Then he turned to face Jimmy, but said nothing.

  “Spit it out, Deputy. Stepping on my last nerve, here.”

  “I think you should sit, Jim.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “It’s about the wrecked truck this morning.”

  That was a relief. Mondale’s shoulders dropped as the tension left them and he pulled out the chair in front of him. As he began to sit an awful thought occurred to him, “Jesus, Bob. What’s going on?”

  “Jim, it’s about Eileen.”

  “My Eileen?”

  TERRY

  It was near dark when they pulled up outside of Terry’s house. “Where the hell did my truck go?” he said.

  Cal shrugged. “Wendell take it for a joyride?”

  That’d be the day. His boy was so timid, he needed permission to take a shit. “I hope so.” Terry racked his brain to come up with a scenario in which his son might steal something from him. Sadly, it was beyond the scope of his imagination. Still, he could always hope. “If he did, I’ll whup his butt.”

  At that moment, Deputy Townsend rolled up behind Cal and flashed the red and blues. “Shit!” they said in unison, and Terry closed the door he was about to get out of. Cal threw the truck into gear and dug a nice new rut through Terry’s front lawn. “How the hell they find us so quick?” said Cal.

  “Drive,” urged Terry. He took the paper bag from the liquor store and stuffed it under the seat with the rest of the trash. Terry thought about the pictures in the envelope Frank had developed for them and looked around for a secure spot to stash them.

  Cal clipped the passenger side mirror on a tree and Terry jumped as far as he could from the seat, bumping against the gear-shift as he did. Cal swung the wheel sharply to the left when he hit the tree and drove them through a hedge of bushes. There was a sudden lurch and Terry was picked up and thrown against the windshield.

  The truck was stopped, the front passenger tire lodged in a rut and Terry’s hip bone had caused a spider-web pattern to spread across the windshield. Cal’s nose broke on the steering wheel and he was dripping blood all over the front of his shirt. Without another thought, Terry slid the manila envelope behind the front seat of the truck and waited for the cops to drag him out.

  Deputy Townsend called out from behind the stalled truck. “Put your hands where I can see them. Hands up.” Terry waited patiently for him, not particularly motivated to move this whole process along. How had they found them so quickly? He and Cal had held up dozens of places and never been arrested for any of them. They hadn’t even hit a spot in town. Someone must’ve got the license number and called it in.

  From the driver’s side, Terry heard the policeman calling out instructions, but neither he nor Cal were listening to them. Cal was looking at him like he’d just woken up, his face painted in lipstick. The policeman’s orders were arriving like shouting underwater. He thought maybe he’d just go to sleep.

  PART II

  The night shift was slow at the Maranatha Family Bookstore in Branson, so Gloria ventured out from behind the register and browsed the aisles and displays for any dusty spots, crooked or misplaced items. On her rounds she found plastic wrap stuffed between slots along the greeting card wall. Someone had helped themselves to a compact disc.

  She unfolded the crinkled wrapping, shaking her head and wondering why anyone would steal religious merchandise. Not that it was uncommon, but it never failed to illicit surprise and a mixture of anger and sympathy for whatever poor, floundering soul was driven to display such good and bad spiritual sense at the same time. When the label on the packaging was legible she found that it was one of her favorites. Hmm, going way back. Sandi Patti. Classic. Oh well, maybe it would do them good, she thought.

  Around the corner, she paused to straighten the endcap. The Brother Eli display was heavily perused she noticed. Books were laying open, face down, ruining the spines, CDs and VHS tapes had been browsed and carelessly returned and there was more trash lying on top. She straightened the display with quick, jerky motions as a probable culprit sprang to mind. A man in his late thirties, with a bolo tie and stone-washed jeans, wearing aviator shades and a ton of cologne had asked her where he could find Brother Eli merchandise. At the time, she’d been helping a customer locate an obscure item on the microfiche and had broken the Maranatha customer service guidelines by simply pointing to the endcap near the back of the store. Shoot. Now she was upset with herself. The man had seemed out of place and rough around the edges, but she was always ready to believe the best about people. This wasn’t the first time she’d been a bad judge of character.

  She picked up the rest of the trash, a Hardees paper, another torn plastic wrapping and penny-saver ad sheet. Muttering to herself, she made her way to the registers and was formatting her incident report when the tinkling bell at the front door announced she had another customer.

  Looking up, she saw a man shy of fifty, but with stark white hair blown back off his forehead accentuating his deeply tanned skin. His teeth too were brilliant, but he was not smiling when he asked where the Brother Eli display was. Gloria began to walk him to the back corner, but he stopped her and said, “Just point.”

  She smiled, blinked, and did so, then turned back to the register thanking heaven she’d just straightened the wrecked display. Behind the counter, she threw out the trash, but held on to the penny-saver thinking she would browse it before tossing it. Placing it beside the register, a manila envelope fell from between its pages onto the floor. She stooped to pick it up.

  It was light and unsealed. When she looked inside she saw that it contained a photograph. She looked up to see if her customer was watching while she removed it. A detective’s sense awakened in her and she believed she might be able to identify the shoplifter from the photograph. She smiled too as the idea to tape the photo onto her incident report followed naturally. She was on a roll.

  She held the picture in her hand and turned it over, revealing what she first mistook for a bald man standing in front of another wearing a cheap wig. Then she gasped and felt her stomach clinch. She slapped the photograph face down on the counter when she noticed the tan man was standing in front of her.

  Her face was white and she was too surprised to speak. Without a word the man placed his hand upon her own and slipped the picture into his palm. He held it up to his face for a moment before calmly slipping it into the breast pocket of his blazer. Then he looked deep into Gloria’s face and held her gaze like a doe’s. He shook his head back and forth subtly and placed his index finger lightly to his pursed lips before walking out of the shop.

  Gloria couldn’t get the image out of her head. The perspective was weird, the focus was slightly off, but there was no mistaking what was going on. No one was going to believe her if she wrote it down in the incident report. Especially if she said who the guy wearing the wig had looked like.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TERRY

  They’d spent a hell of a confusing night in jail, thinking they’d been nabbed for the Mickey Mouse liquor store job. They were all clammed up until the fat ass deputy with the lethal B.O. and coffee breath had asked him what his dog’s name had been.

  Terry’d mumbled “What?”

  The deputy said, “I had a dog before I got married. Big girl. Lab-Shepherd mix. But when she was about ten, my son was born and he had bad allergies to her, had some other respiratory problems, but y’know we could deal with the dog one, so she had to become an all-outdoor dog. She got hit by a car one night. Got out of the yard and wandering around the highway, just darted out in front of someone. Broke me up. What was the dog’s name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hickerson, what was your dog’s
name?”

  Terry raised his head. “What? My dog? Layla?”

  “How old was she?”

  Terry sat up. “Wait. Hold on. What’s my dog got to do with anything?”

  “Layla?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s dead, Terry.”

  “What?”

  “She was in the truck.”

  “Oh shit. My truck was stolen.” Terry had vaguely remembered it had been missing the day before or a hundred years ago. It felt like forever, but suddenly it started coming back.

  Deputy Musil had seen a light in Terry’s eyes for the first time since they’d brought him in. “Stolen?”

  Terry was becoming more animated. “Yeah, it was missing yesterday. Do I need to file a report? My dog is dead?”

  “She is.”

  It was Terry’s turn to slap the table. “You catch the guy?”

  It was Musil’s turn to slump a bit. “Not exactly. There was an accident.”

  “And Layla’s dead?” Musil had gotten up and headed for the door. Terry, suddenly interested in continuing, called after him, “Wait, tell me what happened.”

  At the door, Musil had paused. “There was an accident. Your truck was totaled and your dog was killed. So was the driver.”

  “Who was driving?”

  The policeman had left the room at that point and an hour later both he and Cal were out and free. They’d traded covert looks of relief in the back of the cruiser they’d been given a lift in.

  “Take us to Blaylock Drug. Need a drink.”

  “Let’s just go to The Gulch then,” Cal suggested.

  “I’m not taking you to a bar,” their driver put in.

  “I don’t wanna go to the fuckin Gulch, man. I just wanna get a case and kill it at home. Pass the fuck out.”

  “Okay,” Cal had agreed. “Take us to –”

  “We’re not making any stops. I’m taking you home.”

  “Just drop us off at Blaylock, we’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  That had been okay with the deputy, and at the drug store they’d purchased a case of Stag and marked their path home with discarded gold cans.

  It took three hours to free Cal’s truck from Terry’s yard. The ground was soft from rain and they dug deep ruts spinning his tires in the slick grass. The difficulty of the work was also exaggerated by their general fatigue, as well as the celebration beers they ingested with the gusto of the recently-freed.

  Things weren’t all awesome though. Terry’s truck was wrecked. If he’d had insurance on it, he’d be covered, but he didn’t and he wasn’t. Also, his dog was dead. There were always more dogs to get, but he missed Layla. The old bitch had been with him a long time.

  And the sheriff’s daughter.

  Well that was too bad, but he never thought it was really going anywhere. And now he for sure had to look out for law enforcement. Sheriff was going to be on his ass.

  Cal’s eyes were black and his nose was grotesquely swollen from banging it against the steering wheel when they’d been arrested. Looked like he was wearing a bandit mask and his voice was all stuffy and whistle-y. He looked like a damn Muppet really. Terry stopped his work and looked at his partner’s pale head peeking out between long, thin strands of red hair becoming heavy with sweat, his mouth continually open for breathing and he listened to the grunt and whistle of exertion. Cal was trying to lodge a tree branch beneath the back tires for traction. His already mangled features were further distorted by concentration. He was taking great puffing breaths through his open mouth and spitting every twenty seconds.

  Terry just sat down on the lawn and began to chuckle. Cal looked at him and paused. “What’s so funny?”

  Terry began to double over.

  “What?” demanded Cal.

  Terry laughed harder.

  “What the shit is so funny?”

  Terry rolled onto his side.

  “Think this funny? Think this–” Cal wrenched the tree branch free again and began to swing it at the back end of his truck, “–is funny?”

  Terry began to hoot and Cal swung again at the truck, taking out a taillight. The pop tickled Terry further and Cal turned the branch on his hysterical friend.

  He swiped furiously and repeatedly at Terry who rolled into a ball and covered his head. Cal rained down the punishment, concentrating on the back of his legs and shoulders. Terry’s hysteria only increased and Cal’s fury melted into a laughing fit of his own. He dropped the stick and fell to the lawn himself. “Oh shit.”

  “I thought we were so fucked.”

  “I thought you were. I was ready to flip on you.”

  Uncoiling gradually from his protective ball, Terry kicked Cal in the shin. “The fuck out.”

  “I was gonna tell em all about the photos of you getting tugged by a preacher queen in a queer shithouse.” He laughed harder when Terry kicked him again. So Terry kicked him more. “I still can’t believe you did that.”

  “Shut up,” said Terry, his mood changing.

  “Can’t believe you could even get hard for it.” His laughing reached new levels and he covered his face as Terry rolled on top of him and began punching. “Ow! Hey! Shit! I ain’t judging you. Just, shit! Surprising, you know? Fuck!”

  Terry caught Cal’s forehead at an odd angle and sprained his wrist. Cal hooted and Terry gave up hitting him and caught the next wave of giggles instead.

  They’d lain low since. Cal had impressed upon Terry the need to get a job for cover when their blackmail money came in. He had to have some reasonable source of income, Cal had said, which is why Terry was now catching a ride with his friend every morning to construction sites and getting a refresher course on the machinery.

  Making money was a pain in the dick. He preferred to steal it.

  Irm and Big Randy sat at opposite ends of the tweed couch in Darlin’s office. There was a video playing in the VCR. Redneck vampire clan traveling around Oklahoma or somewhere in a Winnebago had stopped at a shitkicker bar and things were about to get bloody. Irm was lighting a joint and Randy cleaning a shotgun. She offered the big man a hit.

  “Nah, thanks, Irm.” Randy and most of the staff at both Chowder’s and Darlin’s had been on edge in the weeks since Dale whathisname had disappeared and Tate Dill had been let go. Chowder had stepped up security, keeping two people on every shift at the bait shop and hanging around Darlin’s almost around the clock. He’d told Randy to clean all his guns and make sure they were handy which didn’t exactly encourage relaxing in anybody. Except Irm.

  Recently, Irm’s demeanor had cleared considerably. She wasn’t sulking anymore, in fact she was nearly as cheery as anybody could recall. Not that she whistled exactly, but she smiled once or twice and occasionally told a joke. She shut all the windows and closed the doors to Dutch-oven Randy earlier in the evening and the ghost of that nuclear fart still clung to the split ends of his bangs. He didn’t know what to make of it, but had sense enough not to ask questions and to stay alert. Last thing he needed was for Chowder to walk in and catch him getting stoned on watch. His boss was as tense as Irm was loose.

  The lethargic splat of water drops hitting the plastic shower curtain in the back room signaled the end of Chowder’s nap and made the muscles in Randy’s shoulders knot tighter. Irm sensed his tensing and insisted he take a hit, which he reluctantly and gratefully did. One would help. Irm watched him concentrate on it and a sly smile came over her face.

  When Randy stopped holding his breath and exhaled a plume of smoke, he coughed three times before passing the joint back and sinking into the couch. He inhaled deeply through his nose and immediately began coughing and gagging again. “Oh, fuck!”

  Irm rolled on the couch, cackling.

  “Damn, Irm, what are you eating?”

  “S.B.D.”

  “You need to see a doctor, seriously, you’ve gotta have the colon cancer.” Irm laughed harder and took another hit. Randy thought he might prefer sulky Irm to this mirthful and fla
tulent version. He got up off the couch and stumbled for the kitchen and a glass of water. The air was fresher inside the refrigerator for once and he stuck his head in and breathed deeply while digging for a snack.

  “Don’t even think about touching my chili,” said Irm from the other room, still chuckling and sighing with satisfaction.

  Not a chance, thought Randy.

  “Fuck’s sake, Irma,” Chowder growled.

  Randy shut the fridge and got an empty glass he stuck under the tap for a drink.

  “Open a window.”

  Randy turned around to see his boss entering the kitchen, shirtless and running a towel through his grey hair, dark with moisture. He put the towel to his face and vigorously dried his beard before draping the cloth around his neck.

  “Randy,” he acknowledged.

  “Hey, Chowder.” He averted his eyes to keep the outlaw from noticing any recently added redness. “You want a glass of water?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Is it alright if I have one?” Shit.

  Chowder stopped and gave his full attention to the big man. He looked at Randy like he’d just shit the rug. “The fuck do I care?” Randy smiled, trying to make it look like a joke in retrospect. He turned sideways and edged by Chowder back out to the living room. He heard Chowder muttering to himself behind him and thought he’d volunteer to go make some rounds.

  Chowder growled and Irm laughed. Randy exited the trailer grateful for fresh air and distance. He left the shotgun in the office.

  Outside, sitting around the fire, three of the girls and six regulars were discussing the accident. Three weeks earlier, the sheriff’s daughter Eileen had driven a truck right off the road and down a steep hill where she’d been caught and killed by a large tree. It was a big event for Spruce.