Dead Meat

by William G. Tapply

  Bud Turner shook his head. “Tiny wouldn’t like it. Dangerous. Roads’re too rough. No way to treat the sports.”

  “They haven’t been treated all that well, anyway,” I said.

  Turner grinned and put the pickup into gear.

  The crude logging road cut a dark, cool tunnel through the thick forest. The tangled blowdown along the roadside looked as if it must harbor fierce animals. It reminded me of a film I had once seen in which a pair of men traveled by canoe into the headwaters of the Amazon, seeking its source. These Maine woods seemed equally trackless and hostile, and I was grateful for Bud’s nonchalant company and comforted by the presence of his rifle and shotgun in the rack behind us.

  “One of these trips I gotta have this thing tuned up,” he observed, breaking a comfortable silence between us. He drove the twisting, rutted road easily, one elbow cocked out the window, drumming on the roof with his fingers to a tune that played in his head. “Hear that?”

  “Hear what?” I asked.

  “Listen to the engine. There. Hear it? Keeps missin’.”

  I focused on the sound of the truck’s engine. “I can’t hear anything,” I said.

  “Plugs all fouled up. Hate like hell to have her die out here. Long ways from triple-A tow trucks.” He grinned sideways at me.

  I tried to listen more attentively. The closer I listened, the worse that engine began to sound to me. I could hear the pings and wheezes, coughs and burps. It sounded like an old man gasping for breath.

  Or perhaps it was just the power of Bud’s suggestion. I couldn’t tell.

  He coasted to a stop. “Gotta take a look,” he said to me. “You just sit tight.”

  He yanked up the emergency brake, opened the door, and climbed out, leaving the engine idling. Then he reached behind the seat and came out with a long-handled screwdriver. I stayed in the cab while he went around to the front and lifted up the hood. After a moment he called to me, “Slide over, there, Mr. Coyne, and give her a little gas.”

  I did. Then he yelled, “Okay. Ease off now.”

  He played with it for a minute or two, making the engine race and then slow down. “Turn her off now,” he told me. I obeyed.

  He came back and reached in behind my seat. “Gonna try somethin’,” he said. He found a small wrench and returned to the front of the truck.

  By the time we had been sitting still for five minutes or so, the blackflies and mosquitoes found me, and I was swatting and scratching and swearing under my breath when Bud stood to the side and said to me, “Okay, Mr. Coyne. Try and start her up.”

  I turned the key and gave it a little gas. It chugged, sputtered, and died.

  Bud frowned. “You flooded it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He ducked under the hood, then reemerged. “Try her again. Keep your foot off the accelerator.”

  I did as instructed. The engine caught, and Bud revved it from under the hood. Then he slammed down the hood and came back. I slid over to the passenger side. He stowed his tools behind the driver’s seat and climbed in. “Sounds a little better, huh?”

  I nodded doubtfully. “I guess.”

  But by the time we had traveled another mile or so, it became apparent that something was wrong under the hood. There was a rhythmic screeching sound, as if raw metal were scraping across raw metal. Bud gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and he drove hunched forward, a frown cutting deep creases into his long face.

  “Well, shit, anyhow,” he finally muttered. He stopped the truck and got out again. He left the engine running. The screeching sound subsided into a faint whisper. But it was still there.

  Bud took the screwdriver around to the front and once again lifted up the hood. I remained in the truck, feeling useless.

  A minute later he came around to my side of the truck. “Want to come out here and give me a hand?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  I climbed out and followed him to the front. “Let’s try something else,” he said. He leaned in and pointed into the innards of the engine. “Look here. See this little screw?” I bent in beside him. He handed the screwdriver to me. “Hold this here. When I tell you, rotate it a quarter turn clockwise. Okay?”

  I nodded. I fit the business end of the screwdriver into the slot. He went around to the cab of the truck. “Okay, now,” he called. “Give her a little slow twist.”

  I did, and the engine raced. The screeching noise was deafening.

  “Okay. Back her off, now,” he yelled over the din.

  He came back and stood at my shoulder. “Keep her there, now, Mr. Coyne. Gonna do one more thing.”

  I was leaning awkwardly into the truck. The heat from the struggling engine caused sweat to burst from the pores in my forehead and trickle into my eyes. I didn’t dare try to wipe my face, because I didn’t want the screwdriver to slip.

  I believe that in addition to the standard five senses, there is a sixth. Perhaps it’s sensitivity to another person’s electromagnetic output. Maybe it’s a subconscious sensitivity to the odor of someone’s rush of adrenaline, or possibly we can detect subtle changes in air pressure as another moves into our personal space.

  Maybe it really is extrasensory perception.

  Whatever it is, I felt it suddenly as I crouched under the hood of Bud Turner’s truck, and it caused me to duck away reflexively, just as a big Stilson wrench whistled past my ear and smashed against the front of the truck. I stumbled to the ground and rolled awkwardly away.

  “Damn!” muttered Turner and he came at me, the heavy tool raised over his head.

  I scrambled to my feet as he swiped at me again. I staggered backward and fell against the mound of boulders and earth at the edge of the road. The wrench was heavy enough to cause Turner to lose his balance momentarily as he followed through with his swing, and it gave me enough time to scramble over the boulders and duck into the thick undergrowth beside the road.

  The land sloped acutely away from the road, a precipitous drop of a hundred yards or more. It was grown thick with scrub pine and birch saplings and brier, all interlaced with the uprooted old trees and big rocks that a bulldozer had shoved down the slope when it cut the logging road into the side of the hill.

  I crawled, slid, and stumbled down the slope. Get away from Bud Turner. Get deep into the jungly forest. I could think only of escape. I barely felt the briers and the broken stubs of old trees catch and rip my clothes, scratch and gouge my face and arms. Saplings slapped my flesh. Sweat burned my eyes. I fought blindly, panicked, through the thicket until I reached a narrow, fast-moving stream at the foot of the incline.

  “I’m comin’, Mr. Coyne,” Turner yelled. “Might’s well just give her up, because I’m comin’.”

  I tried to run along the edge of the stream. My foot slipped on a mossy rock, and my bad knee cracked against it. “Oh, damn!” I managed to shout before the pain came. My stomach convulsed. I lay there, gripping my knee. Blood seeped through my torn pant leg. I crept to the edge of the stream and eased my leg into it. The chill of the frigid water created a different pain, one I could bear, and when I pulled my leg out, it had grown numb.

  I started to stand when a noise behind me caused me to crouch down, motionless. “No use, Mr. Coyne,” came Turner’s voice. The report of his rifle and the thud of the .30 caliber slug spinning into the trunk of the fallen pine beside my head came at the same instant.

  There was a thick maze of fallen trees in front of me. First on hands and knees and then flat on my belly, I scrambled under it. I heard Turner crashing through the brush behind me. Once I heard him curse, and I assumed he had fallen down.

  I emerged on the other side of the blowdown. To my left ran the stream, burbling gaily through the forest. On the far side of the stream the trees grew tall, and the undergrowth, deprived of sunlight by the high canopy, was sparse. To my right the slope rose sharply back to the road through the tumbledown that had been shoved there by the bulldozers years before. I grabbed a sapling an
d hauled myself to a standing position. My knee throbbed. Gingerly I put my full weight on it. It hurt like hell. But nothing was broken. It would, if I insisted, support me.

  Turner’s rifle cracked again, and over my head I heard the thwang of a deflected bullet. I figured he was guessing at my position, trying to panic me into showing myself. If he had seen me, I didn’t think he would miss me that badly.

  I inched my way carefully up the sharp incline, keeping low and quiet, hoping Turner would misguess my route. I wanted to get back to the road ahead of him.

  Turner made no effort to hide his position. As a result, he moved faster than I could. I had fifty yards on him, I judged. If he stuck to the streambed rather than following me up the hill, I’d be all right.

  “You’re a dead man, Mr. Coyne,” he yelled. He fired again. By the sound of the rifle’s report, I could tell that he hadn’t aimed close to my direction.

  Silence and stealth, I told myself. I pulled myself up the hill, slithering over fallen tree trunks, crawling on my stomach through the brush, moving as quickly as I could without making any noise. I came to the ridge where earth and big boulders had been piled. On the other side of the ridge lay the road.

  To crawl over that mound to the roadside, I would have to expose myself momentarily. A chance that had to be taken. I took a deep breath. I had to hope that Turner wouldn’t be able to see me from where he was, or if he did see me, that he wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot at me.

  The pile of earth was taller than I. It was covered with pine needles, fallen brush, and forest debris, but underneath the earth was loose and soft. It was too steep to walk up. I had to climb, hands and knees, finding grips with toes and fingers.

  I had nearly reached the top when my foot slipped. A large rock broke loose and crashed down the hill behind me.

  This time he had me in his sights. The bullet screamed off a rock next to my left shoulder. Rock splinters bit into the side of my head. I heard Turner quickly lever another round into the magazine of his deer rifle. He was close behind me. I could hear him wheezing and cursing under his breath.

  I heaved myself over the ridge and skidded onto the roadway. Down the road was Bud Turner’s truck, its hood standing open like the gaping maw of a hungry animal. It was less than a hundred yards away. I stood up. My injured knee buckled for a moment. I slammed it with my fist. Then I began to hobble toward the truck, holding my knee with my hand as I went. Once I fell. I scraped my face on the road. I managed to stand. The truck was only a few yards from me.

  Another shot and the slug careened off the hard-packed dirt beside my foot. I lurched for the truck and pulled myself into the cab through the open door on the driver’s side. I glanced back. Turner was sliding down the mound of earth into the roadway, waving his rifle as he struggled with his balance.

  I grabbed the pump-action shotgun from the rack and slid across the seat and out the door on the passenger side. Turner had told me he kept both guns loaded. I pumped a shell into the magazine and thumbed off the safety. I crouched beside the right front fender and rested the shotgun on the edge of the truck.

  Turner was coming up the road, his rifle held in front of him at port arms. When he was thirty-five or forty yards away, he stopped and dropped into a kneeling position. He aimed right at me. “Put her down, Mr. Coyne. Put her down or you’re dead.”

  I was dead either way. I knew that. My only choice was whether Turner would shoot me or whether I should allow him to devise a more creative means for my death. The image of the puckered tricornered wound on Phil Rolando’s neck and the strip of flesh sliced from his scalp intruded into my thoughts.

  Turner would have trouble explaining what happened to me should I be found with a rifle slug in my chest. He might, however, be able to devise a plausible truck accident, from which he managed to escape miraculously just before the gas tank went, should I allow him to take me.

  “You’re going to have to shoot me,” I yelled. I kept the shotgun pointed at him.

  “Suit yourself, then,” he said. He tucked the rifle against his cheek. We were close enough that I could see him squint as he aimed. The open bore of the rifle stared into my eyes.

  The blood was pumping so loudly in my head that I scarcely felt the recoil or heard the report of the twelve-gauge and the simultaneous crack of Turner’s .30-.30. But I heard the hot spinning slug buzz past my ear. And I saw Bud Turner leap into the air and fall onto his back.

  And then I heard him moan.

  I moved cautiously out from behind the truck, shotgun at ready. But I saw instantly that Bud Turner was no threat. He lay curled fetally on the road, covering his face with both hands. The rifle lay well beyond his reach.

  I stood beside him. He was whimpering like a baby. Blood stained his shirt and his hands. “I can’t see,” he whined. “You blinded me. You shot out my eyes. Good Jesus, help me.”

  I put the shotgun down and knelt beside him. “Sit up,” I said. “Let me see.”

  I helped him into a sitting position. Then I pried his hands away from his face. It oozed blood. Blood seeped in little rivulets down his forehead and off his chin. It gathered in pools in his eye sockets. I took off my shirt and dabbed at Bud Turner’s face. He jerked away. “Oh, God. That hurts.”

  “Shut up and sit still,” I said. “Let me see what the damage is.”

  The blood had not yet begun to coagulate, so I was able to wipe it clean. His face had been pocked with about two dozen number-nine pellets of bird shot. The pellets were so small and the distance from which they had been shot so extreme that most of them were visible, embedded just under the skin. Around each of them a drop of blood oozed up as quickly as I could wipe it away.

  But his eyes had been spared, I figured, because of the way he had been hunched behind his rifle when I fired.

  “You’re all right,” I said to him. I stood and picked up the shotgun. Then I grabbed his rifle and flung it into the woods. I pumped another round into the shotgun’s magazine. I tossed my shirt to Turner. “Wipe off your face and get up,” I said.

  “It hurts, man,” he moaned. I jabbed him with the gun. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m gittin’.”

  He wiped his face again. This time the blood welled up from each tiny wound slowly and coagulated there. He looked as if he had a bad case of chicken pox. He put his hands to his face and touched it carefully here and there with his fingertips. “I gotta see a doctor,” he said.

  “It’s a long walk to Greenville,” I said, “with a truck that won’t go.”

  “I can fix the truck,” he mumbled. He approached the truck slowly, his legs wide apart. He walked like an old man who had messed his pants. He kept putting his fingers to his face. When he got to the truck, he bent under the hood. I held the shotgun on him. Then he straightened up. “It’s okay now. It’ll go fine.”

  “What was it?”

  “I wedged a stick in there so’s it’d rub against the fan belt. That’s all.”

  “To give us an excuse to stop.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Climb in. You drive. While you drive, you can talk.”

  “I got nuthin’ to talk about.”

  He got behind the wheel. I went around and slid into the seat beside him. I kept the shotgun across my lap. My finger was curled on the trigger. The bore pointed at Turner’s stomach. “I wouldn’t make a sharp turn or hit a bump too hard,” I said conversationally. “I got the safety off, here.”

  He glanced down at the shotgun. “Jesus, you don’t have to point that thing at me, Mr. Coyne.”

  I shrugged. “You’re a dangerous man, Bud. A killer. I’ve got to be careful. Nobody would blame me if you happened to die.”

  “I ain’t no killer.”

  “You’ve done some poaching.”

  “That ain’t killin’.”

  “You killed a cow moose the other day.”

  His eyes darted sideways at me. “Mebbe I did. So what?”

  “You dressed
her out and hung her at the burial ground. You wanted to make it look like Woody did it. You used his crossbow. Then you sent Phil Rolando there. You planned to kill him up there, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “But I came along,” I said. “Messed up your plan. So you had to wait till that night. Which turned out pretty well for you. You framed Woody, anyway. And Thurl Harris bought it.”

  “You can talk all you want, Mr. Coyne. But I ain’t gonna.”

  “I was hoping we might have a conversation while we drove to town.”

  “I got nuthin’ to say to you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Have it your way. Take the whole rap if you want. We’ll pretend you did it all by yourself, if you want. I expect Asa Danforth won’t give a shit one way or another.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “The two Rolando men. And Gib, of course. Did you wedge a stick into the engine of Gib’s plane, too?”

  He didn’t answer. He started up the engine and put the truck into gear. “What makes you think I had somethin’ to do with all that?” he said.

  “I know what you did,” I lied. I didn’t know. But it was a reasonable guess. “You got Ken Rolando the same way you tried to get me. You dumped his body out here in the woods somewhere. It will be to your advantage at some point to tell the sheriff where the body is. And, of course, it was you who killed Phil Rolando. Plunked him with Woody’s crossbow. Then scalped him and dumped him into the lake. I suppose you didn’t have time to hide his body, the way you did Ken’s. And I know why you did it.” The latter was also a lie. I hadn’t the foggiest idea why the murders were committed.

  I glanced at him. He was frowning.

  “Did you know they were United States marshals?”

  His head jerked around. “They what?”

  “This is big-time stuff, Bud. The two Rolando men were U.S. marshals. Heavy business. You want to face it alone?”

  “You’re just guessin’,” he said dubiously.

  “Gib knew all about it.”

  “Gib knew?”