One Simple Thing

by Warren Read

  “Smuggling,” she said. The sound of it, so filthy and subversive. She turned it over and around in her head. Could there be another word?

  “I guess. It’s not like they’re moving drugs or guns or anything. They’re just folks. Folks trying to make a better life for themself. You of all people ought to understand that.”

  “Look at you,” she said. “A regular Harriet Tubman.”

  He said nothing to that, but just lay there, his humped shoulders rising and falling in sync with her own breathing. Finally, he said, “Anyway, you can’t tell anyone.”

  “You already said that. And anyway, you’re one to be giving orders. Dragging God knows who into the house this time of night. Not saying a goddamned word about it, then warning me off like I’m some child.”

  Lester flipped himself over with the reflex of a snake and leaned into her face, his breath sour and hot. “I’m not shitting you, Nadine,” he hissed. “You breathe one word of this to anyone and I just might lock you in the trunk of one of them old cars out there and never let you out.”

  At that, Nadine jumped from beneath the covers and stood against the wall near the window. She could see Lester’s body propped on his elbow, a reclining shadow with barely enough moonlight to make out those stony eyes.

  “You don’t need to threaten me,” she said. “You already made your point.”

  “I need to know that you hear me loud and clear.”

  “I hear you just fine.” She walked to the edge of the bed and leaned over him. “And for your information, threatening me is a pretty stupid way of making your point. Cause I can lock shit up in a trunk just as easy as you can, Lester Fanning.”

  At this, Lester laughed and rolled back over, away from her. “Whatever, Nadine,” he said. “We’re even then.”

  She stood there for a good five minutes or so, watching his form find its place and settle into a quiet pose, like a mound of dirt in an empty cemetery. And only when she thought he might finally be asleep did she crawl back under the quilt, keeping her body facing his, her eyes following the plaid of his flannel like tracing the lines of a slow, moving grid.

  14

  The parking lot of The Burger Shack was littered with empty Styrofoam cups and wadded paper sacks, and stands of teenagers who slouched against car doors and fenders, and one another, as they dragged on cigarettes and stuffed greasy fries into their mouths practically by the fistful. It was the same thing nearly every night and Lord Almighty how Louis hated the whole scene. He loathed the kids for their laziness and misguided entitlement and freedom from worry, and their sheer ignorance of the kind of world that lay ahead of them. One minute they’re eating a greasy burger and the next minute they could be riding off down the highway with someone they think they know pretty well, only to be left dead a mere twenty-five yards off a forest service road, in the middle of nowhere, no sensible explanation at all.

  “Burger Shack,” he found himself saying aloud to Vinnie. “Nothing like Zip’s.”

  His brother looked up from his chocolate milkshake. “This here is an alright shake,” he said, “but their burgers could stand in for dog food. Hell. Nobody does it as good as Zip’s.”

  Louis remembered vividly the scent of fried onions, and the tumbling plume of smoke that pumped from the flat roof of Zip’s. The grid of streets that stretched out from that place into the East Detroit neighborhoods, from the shores of the Detroit River all the way out to Grosse Pointe. And then his mind rediscovered the tenth-grade harvest dance, and that long walk from the high school to the pay phone that stood alone outside the post office, just across the street from Randy’s Barbershop. He’d still had on him the nickel that Vinnie had given him before he left that night. “Just in case,” he’d said. “You never know when you might need to call, and it’s a lot more than a nickel if you have to reverse the charges.”

  “You got Hattie coming by to see you?”

  “I do,” Vinnie said with an uneasy laugh. He trembled a hand through his wispy hair, like breaking cobwebs. “She ain’t a big kick but she’s good for company.”

  “You know she used to be married to Tip Moody.” Tip ran the U-Pick wrecking yard just off Wolf Creek Road, and everyone and their brother knew the sideshow the two of them had once been.

  “Ancient history,” Vinnie said. “Tip gave up on her a long time before he put her out.”

  Louis took a bite of his burger, dry as sawdust. “I told you I don’t like her in the house when I’m gone,” he said through the chewing. “She’s a bad influence.”

  “At my age, I’m lucky if I can get any influence at all.”

  They’d shared five dances, Louis and Shirley Byers, four fast and one slow, when she suddenly fanned herself and said she was thirsty, that she was going to get a drink of punch. Louis said, “By all means,” moving to the chairs at the edge of the gym to wait for her. That she didn’t come right back didn’t bother him at first. That she lingered on the other side of the gym for some time with her girlfriends, even that didn’t get on his nerves enough to make any kind of difference. But then she ran off with that creature Brenda Hoyt, and when he waved at them, Brenda just laughed at him and yanked Shirley by the arm. The both of them sauntered off from the gym to the parking lot where he knew Sam Gifford and Shel Tompkins were holed up in Shel’s Ford Coupe smoking reefer. They didn’t come back all night. That hurt.

  Louis made that journey from the school to the post office as if his jacket was concrete, and he called home from the pay phone, with the nickel that Vinnie had insisted he take. Just in case.

  And it was his brother who came to him, still wearing his ratty bathrobe, not even having taken the five minutes to change into a set of real clothes. He drove Louis straight to Zip’s, and sat with him without talking, just holding onto his kid brother’s shoulder as the boy cried like a baby into his vanilla milkshake.

  The sun had dropped behind the high mountain ridges and everything had that kind of tinny feel, where even the sunflower stems showed gray. The streetlights were flickering up and down the street in fits, as if even they didn’t understand the time of day. Louis looked to make sure his brother’s seatbelt was locked in before pulling his cruiser from the lot and sailing out onto the highway toward home.

  At first, he didn’t pay much attention to the sedan, other than the burgundy-colored trunk on the navy-blue body. Even that didn’t give him any kind of pause. It was a rare day if he didn’t see a car that was in some way patched together, tires of four different manufacturers, quarter-panels coated in primer, grills and bumpers cobbled together with baling wire, rebar, or even rough-hewn wood.

  It was his brother who noticed it, about fifty yards ahead, pulling out from the liquor store. “He’s winking at you,” he said, pointing a finger up the road.

  “Who’s winking?” And then Louis caught sight of it: a wide-backed sedan—an old Skylark—with its right taillight out.

  Any other time he might have let it go, but it was good to let people know about these things. And his brother was right there. If anyone needed an example of responsibility, it was him. Louis reached down and hit the lights and ran on up close to the sedan, so he could get a look at the plates. They went on like that for a quarter-mile or so, Louis cozy with the car, the driver continuing on his way. Finally, he gave a tap to the siren and the driver waved a hand out the window and steered himself to a stop on the shoulder.

  “Stay here,” Louis said.

  “Where the hell you think I’m gonna go, Einstein?” Vinnie opened the glove compartment and started poking through it.

  Louis got out and did the long walk from door to door. Besides the mismatched trunk, the car was a patchwork of paint and primer, the rear driver’s fender a spackled, matte gray. The driver had the window fully down, his registration and license at the ready. Louis recognized him immediately, the windswept mop and haggard face, wrung through and hung out to dry. The woman in the passenger seat, he did not know, though he could tell she was a p
retty gal, and some years younger than the driver. She stared forward through the windshield, not looking at Louis.

  “Was I speeding?” Lester Fanning slid his elbow out, resting it casually on the door. “It’s forty-five out here.”

  “I know that, Lester,” Louis said. “Were you aware that you have a taillight out?”

  This seemed to irritate him, though Louis couldn’t tell if it was the question or the circumstances that stuck in his side. “No, I was not.”

  “It’s not a felony,” Louis reassured with a grin. He read over the license and registration. Lester Fanning had been on Louis’s radar since his arrival in the county some five or six years earlier. While Louis had to admit that the man hadn’t done anthing in particular to warrant suspicion (at least not that he was aware of), he always seemed up to something, and the sheriff knew from a few phone calls that there was a history there. Lester was a shifty sort who set off every light on Louis’s board—showing up in town at all hours with no consistent schedule, always plenty of cash to throw around. He lived in some primitive cabin he’d thrown together up in Whiskey Hills, and Lord knew there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot up there in those woods other than a scatter of seasonal hunting cabins and a few year-round hippie types.

  “You have some bodywork done?” Louis turned to look back at the gray fender.

  “Just some spot repair,” Lester said. “Rust.” He kept his hands on the steering wheel, squinting up at Louis as he spoke. Above his lip the skin glistened almost imperceptible, if not for the catch of the dropped sun against it.

  “Mr. Fanning,” Louis said. “Can you take those keys from the ignition and step out of the car for me?” He moved back from the car and rested his hand on his holster. He was not yet worried for himself, though there was concern for what might be on display for his brother back in the cruiser. This should be nothing—it probably was nothing. But his gut.

  Lester climbed out, his hands in front of him. He was a short man, but he carried himself tall, broad in the shoulders, squat legs and arms, everything in that rectangular shape. And that hair so unruly and thick as a mop, everything swamped with the dank odor of cigarettes, stale and heady.

  “Am I in trouble, Sheriff?” he asked.

  Louis walked backward, slowly. “I’d like you to open your trunk for me if you would.”

  “What do you need me to do that for?”

  “Lester,” the woman said from inside the car. “Don’t make trouble.”

  Lester leaned down and looked into the car, then looked back at Louis with a grin and a slow shake of his head. He said, “Since the lady protests, I will do that, sir. Though I don’t believe it’s warranted.” He moved with Louis’s pace, his hands visible and steady except for the rattle of the keys. “I do believe I have the right to refuse. But I’m a man who is respectful of the law and the work that you fellows do.” He put the key in the lock and popped the trunk. “Far be it for anyone to say that Lester Fanning does not comply when asked.”

  The trunk lifted like a drawbridge and Louis took from his pocket a pen light and shone it down into the space. With the exception of an old wool blanket that lay folded against the back, the trunk was empty and spotless. He focused the beam at the lamp housing where a pair of wires hung loosely from the connector. He reached in and pinched them between his fingers.

  “Here’s your trouble,” he said. He held the wires up and turned them from one side to the other, the frayed, copper fringe shining in the light.

  “Would you look at that,” Lester said. “I must have snagged them when I was mucking around back here.” He stepped back from Louis and rested his body against the fender. “I’ll be sure and get that taken care of first thing in the morning.”

  “You’ll want to curtail your night driving,” Louis said.

  “I’m heading home as we speak.”

  Louis went back to his cruiser and climbed inside, reaching across Vinnie to the glove compartment. Fishing out a scrap of paper, he wrote out the name and tucked it down into his shirt pocket. “Lester Fanning,” he said aloud.

  “Who’s that?” Vinnie asked.

  “That’s him.” The Buick sat for a second while Lester fiddled with his papers and then it slowly pulled back out onto the highway, the single red stripe shrinking until the car disappeared around the bend.

  “You sure carry yourself out there like you’re somebody,” his brother said. “Like you’re a somebody among somebodies.”

  “World of lions, Vin,” Louis replied. “Doesn’t pay to act like a lamb.”

  “That’s what Dad always said,” Vinnie nodded. “He said that.”

  “Yes, he did.” And then Louis started up the car and eased out onto the highway and drove the last few miles to his house on Polk Street.

  15

  “Haven’t you read that thing a dozen times already?” Lester hovered at the base of the porch steps, his hand cupped over his forehead in a lazy salute. Nadine let the magazine drop to her lap.

  “Don’t get on my case, Lester,” she said. “It’s hot.”

  “I’d be happier to see you taking a walk around the perimeter. Maybe check on the rabbit traps.”

  “You’d be happier?” She laughed at him. “By all means let me help you with that.”

  The truth was, there were plenty of things in Lester that Nadine still felt good about, the same things that pulled her into his pickup truck that day. His eyes, of course—too often Nadine found herself handcuffed by the right shade of blue. The way he cupped her breasts from behind when he held her, the sensation of his unshaven face on her neck, tender more often than simply coarse. And the dozen lines that he recited like some actor in an old movie, the kind of guy with a rain-soaked fedora and a smoldering cigarette hanging from his lip. Not possibly real, except that they felt so genuine in the moment she could have folded them up and kept them in her pocket for the rest of her life.

  “I’ve connected with people off and on all my life, but lady, you’ve got your hooks in me.”

  “I could fall asleep to the sound of you.”

  “I’d put my heart right here on the table, but I think you already stole it.”

  Enough of it all still felt good, and the house was warm and still had all the right smells. And as cutting as he could be sometimes, he usually came back to the good, and he didn’t expect a lot from her, and it was all enough to cancel out most of the bad. It was better than it could be, that much was sure.

  She took the usual path from the house to the near meadow, hugging the underbrush at the base of the trees, where the cage traps were. Lately they sat empty, sometimes probably due to uninterested rabbits, other times because Nadine had intentionally skipped over with the bait.

  She had found herself fascinated with the first meal of rabbit and peas that Lester had prepared for her. She hadn’t eaten rabbit before and the presentation of the whole thing seemed so exotic. The smoky-sweet taste of the meat, and the fact that he’d captured it just for her. She was in the midst of a romance novel, love in the deep woods, a place lost in time. And it stayed like that for a while, Nadine growing to look at the rabbit situation as a sort of competition, a quest to discover all the ways there were to cook the same animal. She’d keep the traps set and ready, and she learned how to skin the things with the skill and precision of a surgeon. But now, well into the second season, she was sick of them, and it seemed like there wasn’t a way in the world to cook rabbit that would hide the gaminess. More and more, all she wanted was chicken.

  In a cloud of Oregon grape near the cedar grove there was a commotion of sorts, a rattle of leaves, and Nadine knew right away what was happening. She could see the thing before she even reached it, flailing in a semicircle, its little unlucky foot caught in one of Lester’s nasty snags.

  She’d always hated those snare traps, and even when she wanted rabbit she would often sabotage the snares when she found them. The sight of a rabbit cinched by the neck, the dirt and groundcover torn up in
a wide circumference made her furious.

  “How would you like it,” she asked Lester, “if someone suddenly took you by the throat? Held you there so you couldn’t get away?”

  “You say it like it ain’t ever happened.”

  No, Nadine decided she’d rather deal a solid club to the rabbit’s head herself, knowing it would be an instant death, than be a party to suffering. This terrified creature, wild-eyed and shaking, the foot swelling but not swollen, wrapped with the wire. She looked back toward the house, but Lester was nowhere.

  “There’s no need for cruelty,” her grandfather would say to her, steadying the rifle butt against his shoulder. His eye settled to a wink, peering into the distance. “Be accurate and it’ll be over for her the instant she hears the sound of the shot.” And he’d squeeze his finger and there would be the crack, and Nadine would flinch, opening her eyes in time to see the doe fall to the ground.

  She peeled her T-shirt over her head and laid it over the little rabbit like a blanket, pressing gently into the warm body, holding it in place with one hand and working the snare with the other. There was a weak fight and a few squeals of protest that always seemed such an unlikely noise to come from such a fairy tale thing.

  Her fingers tugged at the wire and the little foot kicked and twitched, and when it was free, she yanked her shirt away like she was some magician. The rabbit sprung loose from her, disoriented and random at first, then straightening out and bounding off into the understory, a haze of yellow dust in its wake.

  “Be smart next time,” she said, then laughed at the irony. “Says the princess living in the castle tower.” She stood and brushed off her jeans and went ahead and continued on her patrol, her T-shirt hanging from her pocket like a flag. The light breeze brushed over her naked skin and she imagined that if her mother would not have approved of her walking topless through the woods, she’d surely have smiled at the distance she achieved in hurling that damned snare trap out into the far cedar grove.