“That would be something,” Rusty said. Elmore King had found a way around that rule. Trouble was, it was hard to cheat with a bullet in your head.
“Yeah, the world is going to hell when you have to worry about somebody turning in their own pet catfish for the sake of winning a grabbling contest.”
“That’s the truth,” Rusty said.
Clifford stood up straight and pointed to the paper.
“You take a mighty fine picture there, Rusty,” he said, as some fat girl with her own T-shirt that said Gal Grabbler Tupelo, Mississippi, walked by.
It was a good picture. It made Rusty look ten years younger. He didn’t have any current pictures of himself. He was not exactly a person that had a lot of photos of himself. It seemed circumstance was trying to change that.
He figured he would buy him a copy, but he could hear Gloria as vividly as if she were there talking. ‘You don’t think you’re a redneck? You’re the only man I know who has their own mug shot from the newspaper framed and hanging in their living room for a family picture.’
“What all’s going on up there, Cliff?” Rusty meant the cop cars.
“Aw some man from a titty magazine up there signing up big-breasted young women to get their pictures took. Young women all over the place up there. Skinny ones, fat ones. I done wore out my eyes looking at them little tight T-shirts they wearing.”
“That must be a hard thing to do?”
“Yep. But somebody’s got to do it. Then the catfish protestors and the grabblers had them a run-in. Then they’s some protestors from out at the church on the highway, claimed they shouldn’t be taking pictures of women’s titties in Clear Springs.”
“Wonder how they found out about it?” Rusty asked rhetorically. He tossed the paper back on the chair and then walked on up toward the café.
“Hey, hey,” someone called out to Rusty. Rusty turned. Two fat men were pointing their fingers at him. “You Rusty Clay. You the one that blowed up that surgeon.”
The crap had started. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
The second fat man said, “You the only person alive who has grabbled their own body weight unassisted.”
With no warning at all, Rusty found himself sandwiched side by side by the two fat men and a fat woman was now taking their picture.
When the fat men let their hold up on Rusty, the sheriff’s cars lights started flashing on. They must have issued a warrant for him. Rusty looked back. He had a clear path down to his boat.
He wasn’t going to jump bail but he needed two more good weeks. He could put all this together somehow. He was about to run, but the fattest one put his huge arm around Rusty’s neck. “Hell, man. If I could grabble half my body weight, I’d have me a world’s record.”
Rusty pulled his right arm free from the fat man. Rusty pointed at the sheriff’s car. “What are they doing here?”
“Aw, man. Some shitasses was protesting our fine art and sport of catfish grabbling. Said we’s fucking up the natural cycle of the catfish life.”
“They’d a probably tried to nail us with the rain forest gittin cut down and the global warmin melting the ice caps if we’d a put up with their crap,” another grabbler said.
“This son of a bitch, a grown man, got right in my face, stupid enough to point his finger right at my nose calling me a catfish killer,” the fat woman with the camera said. “He weren’t no scrawny bastard either. But when I connected to his cranium oblagata with my right fist he went down like a sack of potatoes.”
Rusty made a break for it.
He hustled back down to his boat, untied it, got in the stern, gave his Johnson a crank and backed out of the area, dodging grabblers in their heavy wide commercial fishing boats, put the outboard in forward and headed out to the channel of the river.
Some things Rusty just didn’t know. Yes, the breeding beds would be disturbed. But folks had been grabbling catfish all his life. And there were still plenty of catfish. Rusty and his daddy would fish every May for big bluegills while they were on the bed. And there were still bluegills aplenty. Mussel divers, Rusty being among them at one time, hand harvested hundreds of pounds, tons of them out of the river, for the mother-of-pearl shells and there were still mussels.
What Rusty didn’t know was where that point was. The point where you took so much from the river that old man river couldn’t replenish himself. The river and man had lived in equilibrium. But now the world was going to hell in a hand basket. When the river went, so did the world.
Rusty spotted at least a dozen boats headed down river as far as he could see before the bend. Then he saw a boat coming upriver.
It was Al and Vivian.
Al waved at him, the kind of wave that meant he wanted to talk. Rusty cruised on out into the channel and circled around starboard so that he could come up alongside bow to stern with Al’s boat.
As he passed by her, he nodded to Vivian. She had her clothes on, but not much. Just some short cut-off jeans and an athletic bra and an athletic shirt. Out here on the river she looked even younger.
Rusty noticed a copy of The Dolopia Democrat and a video camera sitting on the mid thwart of Al’s boat. The way she was dressed. The newspaper. It was clear. Vivian was going out on a grabble.
Rusty flipped the outboard into neutral and left it idling. Al did the same. Rusty reached out and grabbed ahold of Al’s gunwale.
“I was heading up to your place,” Al said. “I got something this morning. I couldn’t break into his office, but I tapped into his home phone without leaving my house.”
“You’re a genius, Al.”
Al shrugged. “What can I say?” Al reached into one of the pockets of his cargo shorts and pulled out a CD, handed it to Rusty.
“Thanks.”
“Take my advice. You can’t be too paranoid with this, Rusty. If I were you I wouldn’t listen to it in your house, if you know what I mean.”
“Okay. You’re the genius man.”
“Isn’t much there, and pardon my unasked for evaluation, but I think that says it all.”
Rusty spoke above the idling outboards but not loud enough for Vivian--who was in the bow looking out at something on the east bank--to hear. “I got word they’re trying to revoke my bail.”
“You know what? They may come to you with some off-the-record good-guy proposal. You need a recorder so you can put this off-the-record shit on the record. I don’t have one on me right now, but I got one I’ll let you have.”
“Thanks.” Rusty looked Al straight in the eye, just to accent his appreciation. And Rusty couldn’t see into Al’s. Al appeared to be looking into Rusty’s eyes, but they were a few degrees off. Like one eye was directed at the bridge of Rusty’s nose and the other at his temple.
And then damn. Rusty noticed Al’s brown eyes. Rusty recalled them to be blue or green or hazel.
Al was one unique bird, and maybe even a little bizarre. Rusty was starting to understand why Gloria--as handsome, smart, and savvy as Al was--divorced and distanced herself from him.
Al let go of Rusty’s gunwale and then spoke loud enough for Vivian to hear. “Got to go, man. Got to find a catfish for this gal to wrestle.”
If Vivian was just trying to grabble a catfish to get the attention of some photographer from Playboy, well, she didn’t need that. All she needed was some valid identification proving she was eighteen years old.
Chapter 27
Rusty tied up his boat and ran up to his house, jerked the screen door open, ran in, and then stopped in the middle of the living room. Ray was leaned against the kitchen counter eating a cold biscuit and country ham. He had his arm off.
Ray just stared at him, like what’s the matter?
“Hey, Ray. Would you cook me up a cheeseburger?”
“What? I look like your wife or something?”
“No, you sure don’t look like my wife. If I had one.”
“I’m busier than a one-armed paperhanger with the crabs.”
�
�You are a one-armed paperhanger and I don’t want to know about your personal life.”
Rusty ran to his room, changed his clothes and started packing his duffel bag.
He was concentrating, he was planning it all out. But then he was shaken out of it. He heard Ray at the front door, talking to somebody. He went to the door and listened.
Ray was saying, “Naw, naw. Don’t worry. I’ll give him your card when I see him next.”
Reporter. Rusty gave it a minute and then slipped down the little hall and into his bathroom. In one quick glance, he saw no one was at his front door and Ray was at the stove, with the skillet sizzling away.
He shaved. Went to the bedroom and got his two duffel bags and came back out. Ray was just finishing up the cheeseburger. He put it on a plate and set it on the table for Rusty.
As soon as he saw Rusty, he said, “You not going to believe this one?”
“Another reporter?”
“Naw, a photographer.”
“What did he want with me?”
“Something about you helping him with the catfish. I think he wants you to show all the big-breasted girls how to hold a catfish or something, but I was too busy looking at his assistant to pay much attention to him. He left his card.”
Rusty sat at the table and started woofing the cheeseburger down. Ray pointed to the man’s card. “You might want him to come over just to look at his girlfriend.”
“She’s got big tits?”
“Naw. She got little bitty ones with big nipples sticking out of her t-shirt. She’s skinny as a rail. She looks like a six foot international model with legs that go up all the way to her tight little ass.”
Rusty was about to come back with some smart-ass comment, but before he could think of anything clever enough, Ray caught sight of his duffel bags.
“What’s up, Rusty?”
“Listen, Ray. I’m staying on Clay Island probably all night tonight. I got to sort some things out. Some people want me in jail and I got to stay one step ahead of these shitasses. Don’t tell anybody where I am. I don’t want them to be an accessory or anything, just in case that’s how the crooked ass law runs.”
“But you don’t mind me being an accessory?”
“You already an accessory.”
“I’d like to accessorize myself onto that lanky assed girl that was just here.”
“Ray, stop talking that nasty shit. You married to a lanky girl.”
“Yeah. A man has to have his dreams.”
Rusty felt like he was running out of time. He grabbed up the rest of the cheeseburger. “Anything happens, Ray, you call me on my cell phone.”
“Will do.”
Rusty was about to run out the door with his duffel bag, but then he stopped.
“I’m thirsty, Ray.”
Rusty went over to the refrigerator and got out a tall, green, glass Perrier bottle he got from Gloria. He and Ray didn’t keep Perrier in it, but used it for their spring water.
As Rusty was guzzling some down, Ray said, “Us Clays don’t like drinking from plastic.”
Rusty let the bottle back down, recapped it. “No sirree. I don’t know what’s wrong with people. Have no eye for quality.”
“The simple things in life,” Ray said.
“Yeah. But they’re not going to do me much good if I’m in prison.”
Chapter 28
Rusty came to the long narrow island--Clay Island all the old time river rats referred to it as--that separated the Elk from Sugar Creek. He cut over to the Sugar Creek side of the island and slowed to half throttle. The hypnotic hum of the outboard changed to a lower wavelength.
He veered up through some weeds, cut the engine, and raised the outboard leg. The boat coasted on up. He jumped out on the bank and pulled the boat until everything but the transom was on dry land.
By the time he had gotten loaded up, Ray had helped him with two duffel bags and an ice chest. For now, Ray just grabbed one of the duffel bags.
He covered his boat with a camouflage net, then walked toward the center of the island with the duffel bag straps over his shoulder.
Rusty breathed in the river air. “I love that smell. Nothing like late spring on the Elk.” Spring air. Spring water.
What was he doing? Enjoying his last moments of freedom? Don’t think like that, Rusty. That’s what you’re doing here. Taking steps to fight that.
He walked on through some cottonwood and willow trees and came into another clearing where the treehouse was, and the log. Log had been there since he was a kid. Locust. Hard and slick and heavy.
A big, old, fat four foot cottonmouth moccasin lay on top of the log sunning. The snake writhed around a little, sort of pissed off at Rusty’s presence.
Rusty wasn’t necessarily scared of a cottonmouth, had caught his fair share of them bare-handed, but still, he gave the log a wide berth, and walked around to the treehouse.
Right there at the edge of the clearing was what he and Ray called the treehouse. It was wooden platform about four feet off the ground, on four by fours. It had a seven foot high tin roof. It was built among some willow and sweet gum trees.
When they were kids, Rusty and Ray had built it and called it their tree house. It served as their camp and hide out. On and off through the years, they had kept and improved it. Ray still spent the night here now and then when he and Alice had a tiff and she kicked him out.
Rusty put the duffel bag up on the platform, then climbed up himself. He took the portable CD/radio player out. He sat on the edge of the platform.
He put the CD in and played it.
Male voice: ‘Hey Jeff, what I have to do? Call you at home to talk to you?’
Jeffrey Starr: ‘I’m sorry, Kent, that I couldn’t take your call today. Listen, I’ve been busier than a dog with two dicks.’
Kent: ‘You’re a star, Starr. You’re all over the news and newspaper. What’s the deal on this Rusty Clay? And what a name I must add.’
Starr: ‘This fucker is my ticket to the governor’s mansion is who he is.’
Kent: ‘Is he guilty?’
Starr: ‘Guilty enough for me. He’s a redneck that likes to make dynamite and blow up stuff. I can prove that. Listen to this, my biggest obstacle was that he had this back-home Atticus Finch lawyer. I had a little circus on my hands. Just a bunch of rednecks doing what they do best. I mean how am I going to get twelve people to send some good ole boy to the electric chair?’
(Both men laugh).
Starr: ‘But then the redneck, listen to this, Kent, he fires his good ole boy attorney and hires, get this, a black Harvard lawyer. Now the case has sophistication and validity. The gods are being kind to Jeffrey Starr. What else is going to fall in my lap?’
Kent: ‘What would be great is if the trial could be televised live locally.’
Starr: ‘I’m working on it. A cable court network is very interested.’
Kent: ‘But do you think he actually did it?’
Starr: ‘Look, I have enough evidence to convince twelve of his peers that he is guilty. If he’s innocent, he can prove it in an appeals court after I’m in the mansion.’
Kent: ‘Hey, Jeff, wouldn’t that be ironic if you are in the position to give this very man his stay of execution?’
Starr: ‘Let the fucker fry. And anyway by the time his execution comes up, I’ll be in the U.S. Senate.’
Kent: ‘You are one busy man. When can we do lunch?’
Starr: ‘Listen, I’m laying low tomorrow. I’m letting this bail revoking fall where it may. I’m disappearing tomorrow morning. I’m going to get in my bass boat all alone and go down the river about day light and go over to this little spot in the Wheeler Refugee and do me some casting. No cell phones. No thinking about any cases. Then I’m coming in early afternoon, all fresh and I’m going to get this redneck behind bars and keep him behind bars. I send his ass off, I’ll jump on another one… Hey, man, listen, I got to go…
The CD went blank.
; Rusty stood up. “It’s time I opened me up a can of riverman head games,” he said to the old locust log, like it was imbued with some kind of life.
Chapter 29
At four o’clock the next morning, Rusty tossed aside the cover, rolled off his air mattress, and got out from under the mosquito net.
He made a fire, cooked some country ham, eggs and camp coffee. Then with the use of a flashlight, he walked back to his skiff. He was careful to avoid the locust log and the cottonmouth.
He got into this skiff and puttered up the river in the dark. He cruised up to his boathouse and swapped out his skiff for his hydroplane.
Then he cruised back slowly down the Elk, taking his time. He used a spotlight to scan the water ahead of him. He steered clear of a snag here and there.
By the time he got to the mouth of the Elk, there was a little light showing on the horizon. He headed up the Tennessee River. Now there was enough light to navigate by. He put the spotlight away and opened up the throttle. When he had it wide open, he pushed the electric motor button--one of Ray’s many inventions.
The part of the transom the Mercury was bolted to slowly raised up. And with that it brought the propeller right at the surface of the water, causing the hydroplane to go into super-speed. He looked back. The prop was kicking up a rooster tail that went up twenty feet in the air.
Soon, he skimmed across the smooth surface of the water at speeds up to sixty miles an hour. He steered over toward the southern bank, got in the channel.
A slow-moving freight train was going across the train bridge. The caboose passed the trestle as Rusty went under the bridge. He could only imagine the engineer, looking down at the river and to the east.
The Tennessee River. The rising sun. A lone boat with a high rooster tail.
Rusty envisioned an old man five years from now, sitting in his den, showing off some photographs. “This one, I took right before I retired. I’s going across the Tennessee River and it just looked so peaceful. I couldn’t help but wonder who it was in that hydroplane. Who it was, what his life was like, what he was doing out in the channel. I grabbed up my camera at the last minute and got this shot.”
The Redneck Detective Agency (The Redneck Detective Agency Mystery Series Book 1) Page 12