Elmer didn’t want to get into it, not right now. He brawled better with a few tall ones under his belt. There were a couple under the truck seat and it would give him a head start on the afternoon and make crawling in shit a little more bearable.
He slammed the trailer door hard enough to cause Vernell to yip and then got his tools from the truck. Like most in vocational trades, Elmer didn’t like to take his work home with him. Carpenters couldn’t be troubled to so much as hang a picture hook, painters wouldn’t color a toenail, and plumbers were pissed off if they had to slorp a plunger around in a blocked toilet to jam out some cooze’s bloody Tampax.
As he went around the trailer, he saw the open window in the boys’ bedroom. He braced himself on the oil-tank rack and stretched up to look in the room. It looked like Bobby was still asleep, curled up in the blankets on the bottom bunk. He watched for a moment, figuring if Bobby was tickling the one-handed puppet then the bunk would be shaking.
Nothing. Not a thing. Not even the slow rise and fall of breathing.
Elmer was about to punch the glass hard enough to break it when he saw a crevice in the blankets, right where they met the pillow. He peered through the window at the place where Bobby’s head should be. The skin was smooth and white, and a stitched patch of black met it.
Fucking soccer ball. The bastard pulled the old sleeping-dummy trick.
Elmer stifled a surge of pride. Though he’d played a version of that stunt on his own folks plenty of times, sneaking out on Friday nights to knock down whiskey that his friends paid winos to purchase, he couldn’t rightly claim a genetic link. Bobby was just a drain on the wallet and another pain in the ass, and if Elmer couldn’t even get a little labor out of him, then he might as well send the brat’s medical and grocery bills to the real father, whoever that was.
Bobby was probably down at the Davis trailer, dorking around with Vernon Ray. Elmer had no idea why his inherited son would want to hang around with a blooming fruit, but Bobby had always been a little too sensitive for his own good. He read too many books, for one thing.
Elmer would have worried about Bobby maybe having a little sugar in his britches, but Bobby was a jock and the little chickies seemed to dig him just fine. Too bad he spent all his time hanging around with his guy friends. He was probably missing out on a ton of stinky finger.
Well, even a bitch like Vernell can’t expect me to fix the busted pipe all by myself. I’ll go round up Bobby and maybe even get Vernon Ray to help out, too. About time Bobby learned the family trade, anyway.
Elmer walked to the Davis trailer, making sure he kicked over one of the little flagstones that girded the flower garden around the porch. Yes, suh, Captain Fucking Davis. The officer’s quarters are always a mite finer than what the troops get. Privilege of rank and all that happy horseshit.
Elmer pounded on the door, his hangover gripping his skull in the bright sun. Maybe he’d hit Jeff up for a cold one, even though it was barely past noon. Chat him about the Civil War and Elmer might even get two or three freebies, plenty of lubrication for wallowing in shitty water and fixing a pipe. Just like a regular workday.
Jeff opened the door a crack, his mustache twitching. “Hey, Elmer. You not in church?”
“I already been saved. After that, I didn’t see much point.”
“Got your golden ticket, huh? Want a beer?”
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
“Come on in. Martha’s gone to Barkersville to get her hair done.”
Elmer stepped inside. The trailer, as usual, smelled like mothballs and Clorox. Framed portraits of Jeff’s Civil War ancestors covered the walls, and a print of the C.S.S. Neuse, an ill-fated ironclad, dominated the wall behind the couch. Jeff’s wife had made a few decorative overtures like a basket of potpourri and doilies on the armchairs, but this was clearly Jeff’s house. It made Elmer resent him even more, because Elmer busted his ass to pay rent, but that lazy-assed Vernell called the shots.
Fuck it. He followed Jeff to the kitchen, his parched tongue licking his lips in anticipation.
As Jeff handed him a Budweiser, Elmer nodded thanks and said, “Say, did Bobby come over?”
“Bobby? I thought he was at your house. Vernon Ray said he was spending the night over there.”
“I ain’t seen either of them.”
“You mean they were out all night?”
Elmer didn’t want to think about the boys’ sleeping together. Bad enough to be raising the creation of another man’s sperm, but raising a fag would be 10 times worse. “Probably nothing. Boys will be boys. Remember when we was kids?”
Jeff gazed out the window at the trailer park, chin up in that prissy little officer’s stance he used, and Elmer doubted if the guy remembered much of anything that didn’t feed his little Civil War fantasy. “Yeah. We had some good times. Playing army, hiding in the woods, building forts.”
Come to think of it, Jeff had been a mad general even back then, always giving orders and making sure they all died dramatic fake deaths. Then he’d command them to stand up and do it all again, the outnumbered Rebs against the blue-bellied hordes of the devil. He’d even refused to play with Lincoln logs because of their connection to the Union’s leader.
Elmer took a sip of his beer, which washed down the resentment. “Yeah. Kids nowadays with their goddamned videogames.”
“They don’t know how to use their imaginations anymore,” Jeff said, twirling one end of his mustache.
Right-o, Cap’n. And some of us still live in the land of make-believe.
“Well, I got to fix a busted sewer pipe or I’ll have to listen to Vernell bitch for the rest of the day,” Elmer said.
“You going to watch the race later?”
“If I get done in time.”
“I got a new cap-and-ball pistol to try out. Want to do some shooting?”
“You bring the beer and I’ll be there.”
“Okay. I’ll pick you up after the race. We can go up Mulatto Mountain.”
Elmer blinked redness from his eyes. “That ain’t game land anymore. It’s private development.”
“We won’t hurt anything. Besides, it’s Budget Bill. He never had any problem with people hunting his land.”
Elmer had no desire to go anywhere near the Jangling Hole, but he wasn’t about to admit it. Jeff had practically built his life on notions of honor, glory, and courage, and while Elmer couldn’t give two shits about any of that, he wasn’t about to show his spinelessness. “Pistol, eh?”
“Remington .44 replica. Got a nice kick to it.”
“Set you back a bit?”
“A couple hundred.”
“I don’t see how Martha lets you get away with that. Vernell would shit a squealing worm if I dumped any more money into the hobby.”
Jeff reached up to his forehead as if to adjust the brim of his Stetson, then realized his head was bare. He touched his hair instead. “It’s all in making enough to keep her happy. Send her to Old Navy with the credit card once a month, keep her satisfied in the sack, and let her win all the arguments except the ones that matter.”
Elmer didn’t even have a credit card, and he couldn’t remember the last time Vernell had even bothered to fake an orgasm. And Vernell won every argument, whether important or not. He was beginning to hate Jeff even more than before. But another sip of cold suds washed down a little bitterness. A few more cans of Bud and good ol’ Cap’n Davis would be as worthy of worship as Stonewall Jackson and General Lee.
“Vernell’s a bitch,” Elmer said.
“You just haven’t figured out what makes her happy.”
Elmer studied the man’s eyes. They held a gleam of secret triumph. Elmer noticed for the first time they were blue-gray, the color of a gun barrel. The same color as Bobby’s, now that he thought about it.
“Why would I want her to be happy?” Elmer drained the Bud can, tilting it so the flat foam in the bottom tickled his tonsils. In his trailer, he’d throw empty cans acro
ss the room, trying to bank them off the wall and into the trash. Jeff’s house was regimented and orderly and smelled like one of those specialty gift shops in the mall, the kind that made you sneeze about as fast as it made you bored. Elmer set the can on an imitation, catalog-ordered antique tea table. “Well, time to eat some shit,” he said with exaggerated good cheer.
Jeff, still gazing out the window, held up a hand as if signaling troops to be quiet. Elmer went to the window, figuring either the 19-year-old tart Shawna Hicks was strutting around the trailer park in cut-off jeans and no bra or else the cops had driven up to the Baker double-wide with another warrant. Something worth seeing, in other words.
Instead, it was just another drunk staggering off from what was likely a sleepless night of porking Louise Templeton at 50 bucks a pop. Elmer had dipped his bucket in that well a couple of times himself, but the last time he’d reeled it back in with a dose of the clap, and he was worried what else she might have picked up in the meantime. Plus, 50 bucks was 50 bucks, and Vernell was cheaper, and his hand was free.
“You know him?” Elmer said.
“Check out that tunic.”
“Tunic? Looks like a coat that the squirrels have been sleeping in.”
“Wool. And the canteen.”
Canteen? Nobody carried canteens anymore. Even hunters had gone to bottled water. The last time Elmer had actually seen somebody sip from a canteen, they’d all been dressed up in Civil War costumes and gathering for a bivouac in Charlottesville. “He’s walking a mite wobbly.”
“Man on a mission.”
Elmer didn’t want to add that the guy’s boots didn’t appear to be touching the ground. Jeff left the window for a minute, rummaging in the broom closet, and Elmer licked his lips, wondering if it was too soon to cadge another beer. Jeff returned with some field binoculars and squinted into them.
He whistled low. “I thought it was a replica, but damned if it doesn’t look authentic. Even has the C.S.A. stamp in the tin.”
There were plenty of counterfeiters skilled at taking a replica, beating the hell out of it, then cramming a century-and-a-half’s worth of grime into the crevices until it could pass for the real thing. And the weekend soldiers who collected such items couldn’t tell the real from the fake, and they didn’t really care that much as long as they had bragging rights. But Jeff was pretty hard to fool, even from a distance.
“Maybe he’s come for the Stoneman re-enactment,” Elmer said, punctuating with a belch that mocked the contrived elegance of the Davis living room.
“This early? I know the 37th is coming in, but they won’t be here until Friday.”
“Well, if he’s not in the troop, I guess we ought to recruit him.”
Jeff smiled and lowered the binoculars. “Saddle up, soldier.”
Elmer gave a wistful glance at the kitchen but Jeff was already out the door, so Elmer followed. The wobbly wino was a good 100 yards ahead, nearing the trailer park’s entrance, where a walking path veered off to a strip mall and gas station.
Jeff broke into a jog, a benefit of Titusville Total Fitness and its $40-a-month membership. Elmer padded along in Jeff’s wake as best he could, embarrassed by the jiggle in his belly. He half expected Vernell to shriek at him from a window, but he actually would have welcomed it, because it would have given him an excuse to drop the pursuit.
Because the wino creeped him out big-time and made him think of the disappearing man in the bowling alley.
For one thing, the man’s legs were moving like he was hellbent for home and nothing would stand in his way, but his feet skimmed over the ground as if he were ice skating. Like he was moving forward faster than his steps should have carried him. And, Elmer wasn’t a nature freak by any means, but he’d noticed the birds in the neighboring trees had fallen silent. The shithead Baker pit bull, staked to a clothesline post and ready to bark every time a gnat farted, had not even uttered a growl.
Jeff was now a good 20 paces ahead of Elmer, and that was just fine by him. Elmer slowed down a little, breathing hard, acid from the rising beer gas scorching his throat.
A tractor trailer rumbled down the highway, air horn blaring because the wino was nearly to the road and didn’t follow the standard rule of looking both ways before crossing. The wino didn’t slow a step and the buffeting force of the passing trailer didn’t shake him in the slightest.
“Hey,” Jeff shouted, breaking into a jerky middle-aged sprint.
Elmer stopped and waited for Jeff to catch the man. The wino stepped onto the asphalt and kept hoofing it, and a Honda screeched its brakes to avoid him. Then he was on the other side, into the scrub vegetation bordering the creek, and he disappeared into the tangled growth with barely a rustle of leaves to mark his passage. Jeff was delayed by a string of traffic, and by the time he crossed the road, the trail was cold.
Elmer reached the creek by the time Jeff had given up. “Too bad you couldn’t recruit him,” Elmer said. “The guy had the makings of a good soldier.”
“Yeah, too bad,” Jeff said.
As Jeff turned and headed back to the trailer park, Elmer looked down at the muddy creek bank where the man had vanished in the brush.
No footprints.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Why couldn’t you wait six more months before you brought me another hard-to-figure corpse?” said Perry Hoyle, Pickett County’s white-haired medical examiner of record. “Then I’d be retired and a younger idiot would be around to clean up your messes.”
“It’s not much of a mess,” Sheriff Littlefield said. “Looks like a cut-and-dried bullet hole to the head.”
“Ain’t all the way dried yet, but it’s plenty cut,” Hoyle said, motioning to the spray of blood-stained hair and brains that were scattered across the dirty leaves. “Looks like a high-caliber bullet, but something is a little off.”
“What’s that?”
“The back of his skull is blown out like you’d expect from a close-range shot, but his forehead is cracked, too. Almost like he was struck with a blunt object instead of a bullet.”
Littlefield knelt and peered at the corpse, which now lay on its back on a stretcher. The man’s eyes stared up as if communicating his shock to the heavens. Hoyle had wiped around the wound, but it still resembled a tarry third eye that had wept mud. The edges of bone that showed were chipped and broken.
“I don’t guess there’s much chance of finding the bullet,” Littlefield said. Morton was surveying the area behind the bulldozer, checking the tree trunks for signs of an imbedded fragment, but it could just as easily have ricocheted off the bulldozer and disappeared into the leaves. That would almost literally make the task like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“I’d say you got bigger problems than that,” Hoyle said. He brushed back his wild Einstein hair and pointed to the yellow crime-scene tape that cordoned off the clearing.
“One set of footprints besides the guest of honor’s. Sneakers.”
“And they’re little, a size eight maybe. Not much of an impression in the mud, so you figure somebody lightweight.”
“A woman or a kid.”
“Why can’t you just have a normal murder once in a while?”
“Because you’d get bored.”
Hoyle waved to the ambulance attendants who stood waiting at the scene’s perimeter. Bill Willard, who had been sitting in his pickup, rolled down his window and shouted at Littlefield. “Hey, can I come in now?”
“We got to get some plaster casts of these footprints first.”
Budget Bill exited the truck and joined the attendants at the yellow tape. “Good thing he wasn’t on payroll. That would have sent my workman’s comp through the roof.”
“You’re a man of compassion, Bill.”
“Hey, it’s not like I’m the one who shot him. Carter was the best damned dozer man in the county. This will set me three days behind schedule.”
“If Christ rose from the dead in three days, I’m sure you can find ano
ther dozer operator in that time.”
A vehicle engine wound up the rough-cut road through the forest below. “Dadgum,” Bill said. “May as well set up a circus tent and sell tickets.”
Hoyle said, “I’ve got all the photos I need. May as well get this one back to the morgue and dig around in his head.”
He motioned the attendants to the body and they dragged the stretcher, its wheels miring in the mud. Littlefield checked the bulldozer’s engine and noticed it was a little warm. He was about to ask Morton if any evidence had turned up when a rusty, primer-spotted Honda sedan emerged from the trees, an “I Brake For Unicorns” bumper sticker flanking one that supported Ralph Nader for president.
“Wonderful,” Littlefield said aloud.
“Can she just drive up like that?” Bill said, his cherubic cheeks reddening. “Isn’t it trespassing?”
“Technically, this is private property, but it’s also a public crime scene,” Littlefield said. “So it’s a gray area, and I’m sure she could sic the state press association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and an army of liberal legislators on both of us if we tried to stop her.”
Cindy Baumhower got out of her car, dangling a camera with a telephoto lens, a small steno pad tucked in her armpit. “Howdy, gentlemen,” she said, her face bright enough that it looked like she might start whistling like a lark.
“You look pretty happy about a dead man,” Littlefield said.
“I don’t make the news, I just report it,” she said. “Hello, Mr. Willard. Do you have any comment for the record about the first fatality in your planned development?”
“First?” Bill was wary, heeding the unwritten rule that it was bad strategy to piss off anybody whose company bought ink by the barrel. “You say that like there’s going to be more.”
“Depends on how I spin it,” she said, bringing the camera to her eye as the attendants began loading the corpse.
“Come on, Cindy,” Littlefield said. “Have a little respect for Carter’s family.”
“Shucks, Sheriff, you know I won’t run anything red on the front page. But I have to give my editor something to prove to readers we were here.”
Littlefield Page 45