“Then she admits to being part of it?”
“No. Actually she claims she told him to take a hike.”
“Maybe I don’t like her as much as I thought I did.”
“She’s still gorgeous.”
“Beauty is only skin deep.”
“Listen to you now.”
June considered the news about May-May quietly. “I guess, as much as I hate to admit it, being his mother and all, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Her voice trailed off sadly.
“To make things worse, Tammy caught us at the diner and, without giving any details, said I should stop up at the farm. Apparently, May-May’s got something going on up there.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t made it out there yet.”
“I wish that boy could stay out of trouble. What did I do differently with him than with you and Merrill?”
Kent wanted to tell her it wasn’t her. It was Clifton who messed up. Instead, he said, “It’s nobody’s fault, Mom.”
“What do you think, Kent? Do you figure he did it?”
“I don’t know. May-May’s done a lot of dumb things in his life, but I can’t imagine he’d burn Stef’s business.”
“By Jesus, I hope not. If he’s not careful, he’ll wind up in jail again.”
“Except we’re talking arson here. He’d go up a long time.”
“Would it do any good for me to talk to him? I could call him up, tell him to stop by. He still listens to me, you know.”
Kent knew better. May-May hadn’t listened to his mother, or anyone else offering good advice, since third grade.
“No. Let’s not show all our cards just yet. You know how he always says he’s the first to get blamed whenever anything goes wrong. We won’t give him a chance to start that. I’ll stop out at the farm tomorrow and see where that leads us.”
He helped the aides get June situated back in her room, and they visited a few more minutes. As he stood to go, June took his hand. Her eyes held the look of a mare afraid for her foal. “Kent, you be careful. May-May can be very dangerous if he’s cornered. He’s got his father’s wickedness.”
“I will, Mom.” He kissed her cheek gently. “Happy birthday.”
Chapter 14
Kent stopped his truck in the glow of a streetlight a few paces from the Red Horse Inn. Barry pushed himself up from the curb where he’d been sitting, trotted over, and climbed in the passenger seat. Lucinda stuck her head over the seat and licked his ear.
“Ready to add coon hunting to your library of life’s experiences?” Kent asked.
“I think so.”
“No sign of Nathan yet?”
“Nope.”
“He should be here any minute.”
They waited in silence for a while, Kent watching for Nathan, Barry stroking Lucinda’s muzzle.
Then Barry asked, “You’re Nathan’s uncle, right?”
“Yes. Well, maybe not officially. His stepfather is my half brother, if you can follow that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You met his mother—Tammy, the waitress? She had Nathan when she was real young.”
“At least he has a father.”
“Where is yours?”
“Long gone.”
“It’s been tough for Nathan. He and May-May don’t get along very well.”
“He seems pretty cool.”
“As I said, Nathan’s got his problems, but he’s resourceful, and he’s in there plugging away. The trouble is he’s basically on his own.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. His mom let him get a tattoo.”
“Believe me, you would not want to trade places with Nathan.”
They became silent again, both pondering that possibility. A candy-apple red 4x4 pickup came from behind, slowed, and then pulled to the curb just in front of them.
It was jacked up at least a foot higher than Kent’s truck. Knobby tires bulged from the wheel wells. A whip antenna lilted from the momentum of the stop. Light from the streetlight played off its polished chrome and highlighted Power Wagon in bold letters across the tailgate.
“Wow. Look at that truck!” Barry said, as the rumbling of its glass-pack mufflers ceased.
Dark tinted windows hid the driver, but Kent knew who it was. “Speak of the devil,” he said, half under his breath.
Barry glanced over at him, then back at the truck. “Who’s that?”
“May-May himself.”
“Nathan’s stepfather?”
“In the flesh.”
The big truck’s door opened. A heavyset man with long hair and beard, tired work clothes, and a sullen expression stepped down on wobbly legs. He gave Kent’s truck a narrow-eyed once-over and then turned without acknowledging it. He wobbled around the front of his truck, balancing himself by running a hand along the hood. He negotiated the Red Horse Inn’s seven stone steps unsteadily and disappeared inside.
“Must be Tammy’s working at the Groggery tonight,” Kent said.
“He looked pretty drunk.”
Kent let the comment go.
They were staring at the truck’s gleaming tailgate when a hand emerged. Like a small mammal emerging from its burrow, it poked out from under the black canvas tonneau cover, felt its way along the tailgate, and tripped the latch. The tailgate fell open. Nathan rolled out, eased the tailgate back up quietly, and stepped quickly to Kent’s truck. Kent cranked the motor. “I told you he was resourceful!”
Barry held the seat forward as Nathan slipped in with Lucinda. “What were you doing in there?”
“Sorry I’m late. May-May messed me up. He decided to start his drinking at home tonight. He didn’t leave the house when I figured he would.”
“Why were you in the back of the truck?”
Nathan gave a sly look. “I sneak rides from May-May all the time. He still hasn’t figured out that he is my main ride to town if Mom is working.”
“Why don’t you just ask him for a ride?”
“I’m grounded. At least, he says I am.”
“Oh.”
“Plus I don’t want him to think I need him for anything.”
“Well, anyway,” Kent said as they headed for the forest, “you made it. And we’re off to hunt some coons.”
Kent eased his truck, pitching and rolling, along a single lane road through the darkness and dense hardwoods up in the state land. Both boys kept their eyes fixed on the tiny wedge of visibility created by the headlights. They stopped as the road dwindled to an overgrown logging trail. Lucinda, vibrating with excitement, nearly trampled Nathan.
Kent shut off the engine. Listened to the night sounds. Stared into the darkness. “Quiet, isn’t it?”
He heard Barry swallow hard.
“How do you know where you’re going? It’s blacker than black out there.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got lights. Here’s how it works. Up ahead is—”
Barry cut him off. “Doc, this isn’t a snipe hunt, is it?”
It took Kent a second to catch the boy’s drift. His heart sank. He glanced back and saw a mix of surprise and sympathy on Nathan’s face, too.
“No, Barry, it is not a snipe hunt.” Then, as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he could see the fear in Barry’s eyes.
“Jesus. We wouldn’t do that to you!”
Barry didn’t move.
Kent remembered the boy’s remark at the Wheat Sepal on the day they met. Other kids think I’m weird. He suspected Barry had been the butt of many a cruel joke because of his mother’s politics.
For a second, Kent thought he might have to call off the trip. Then he reached down and took a huge ring of keys from the ignition and handed them to Barry. “Don’t lose these,” he said. “You’ve got the keys to the truck, my clinic, my house,
and a pile more. Nathan and I don’t want to walk home.”
Barry massaged the keys in his hand and mulled over Kent’s gesture of good faith. Finally, he drew a deep breath and blew it out. He jammed the key ring into his jeans pocket. “I’m in.”
Kent started again. “Now, as I was saying, ahead there’s a section of hardwoods that goes up the hillside. On top is a cornfield. Most of it’s been chopped for this year. Coming down from the left is a pretty good size stream. Perfect coon-hunting terrain. As soon as I open the door, Lucinda will be off like a shot. We’ll get our gear and kinda follow along behind her. Ready?”
“Ready,” Barry said with genuine enthusiasm.
Kent opened the door, and Lucinda hit the ground at a full run into the night.
Barry stared after her. “How the heck are we supposed to follow that?”
“Stand still and keep your ears open.”
Kent opened the rear of his truck and pulled out three hard hats with lights attached. “Have a miner’s hat,” he said, handing one to each boy. “The battery pack goes on your belt.”
From a worn leather gun case, he extracted a Remington .22 rifle with scope. Immediately, Barry’s dubious expression returned.
Kent frowned at Nathan. Gestured toward Barry. “Looks to me like he’s never been around a rifle, huh?”
“Nope,” Barry said.
“Don’t worry. They’re safe enough if you obey the rules. I’ll carry it tonight.”
Kent held up one hand, signaling for quiet, then cupped his other hand around his ear. “Hear that?”
“I can hear Lucinda yipping, if that’s what you mean,” Barry said.
“That, my friend, is no yip,” Kent said. “That is the trailing bark of a well-schooled coonhound. Music in the night woods.”
“Sorry.” Barry listened again. “Does sound kind of neat.”
“That is the ultimate understatement.”
“How far away is she?”
“I’d guess a quarter mile.”
“She’s on the trail of a raccoon?”
“Yep. Put it this way, if she’s on a deer trail, I’ll wring her neck.”
Suddenly the tenor of Lucinda’s voice changed from an even cadence of staccato barks to a series of long slow howls.
“She’s got him.” Kent said.
“How do you know?”
“Did you hear her voice change?”
“Yes.”
“That’s her treeing howl. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Barry said, beginning to like the game.
Kent charged off into the darkness. “Let’s get moving.”
Fifteen minutes later, huffing for breath, they found Lucinda braced against an ancient beech tree singing up into its branches.
“There’s a coon up there?” Barry asked between breaths.
“You can bet on it.” Kent handed him a square flashlight. “Here. See if you can spot him.”
Barry clicked it on and squinted as the powerful beam exploded through the night. “Man, that’s some light.”
“Shine it up in the branches. Look for the reflection off a pair of eyes.”
It took several minutes of systematic scanning limb by limb before Barry held the beam on two iridescent points glowing in a sea of blackness thirty feet above them.
“Told you so,” Kent said. “Lucinda would never let me down. Keep your light right there, and I’ll dispatch him.”
“Dispatch him?”
Barry’s inquiry was followed by a crisp snap, like a small firecracker, in the darkness beside him. He jumped.
“Yep. Right between the eyes,” Kent said.
Branches rattled, and twigs fell from above into the leaves. There was a heavy thud. Lucinda pounced on the coon, but it did not move.
Barry and Nathan raced over to investigate. Nathan hefted the beast with one arm and turned it for Kent to see. “You got him!”
“We sure did,” Kent said. “You guys, me, and Lucinda.”
Barry watched eagerly as he learned the art of skinning an animal. Kent tucked the pelt into a plastic bag, washed his hands in the creek. He brushed off a seat on a convenient rock, broke out a bag of sandwiches. Passed it to the boys.
“I wish Aaron was here with us tonight,” he said, hand-feeding tidbits to Lucinda. “He’d have been proud to see a couple of young guys like you in the woods.”
“Wasn’t that the guy they found dead the day we got into town?” Barry asked, chewing.
“Yes. He was a great man. A real good friend of mine.”
Nathan’s voice came out of the darkness. Deep, bitter. “He was an asshole.”
Kent had never known a single kid, not one, who didn’t like and respect Aaron Whitmore. “Why do you say that, Nathan?”
“He was a control freak. Just like Eugene.”
“No.”
“If you weren’t moving like him, you were nobody.”
“That’s not true.”
“He kicked me out of Scouts because I wouldn’t wear one of his faggot uniforms.”
“He was trying to make you into a team player. Follow a chain of command. It’s a good lesson.”
“He was a do-gooder old fart. It was about time somebody knocked him off.”
Kent’s voice became a low hiss. “What makes you think somebody knocked him off? The police said it a suicide.”
Nathan said nothing, but the silence that hung in the air spoke volumes.
“You know something about Aaron’s death, Nathan?”
More silence. Then weakly, “I don’t know nothing.”
“You’d tell me if you did though, right?” It was more of an order than a request.
Nathan flashed him a defiant look. “Now who’s being a control freak? I told you, I don’t know a damn thing about what went on at Cuyler Lake.”
The three of them ate sandwiches in the dark, taking in the sounds of the brook and breeze. The smell of moldering leaves.
***
The next morning Barry raced around getting caught up on his studies and finishing laundry chores before his mother returned from the rodeo rally. The whole time he thought about the night before—Lucinda baying in the distance, the night woods, the kill. It had been a wonderful night. He rubbed his fingers over a stinging scratch on his cheek. A battle scar. The hours of that night had gone faster than any he had ever experienced. Wet feet in the creek. Firing a rifle for the first time. Elation tempered with pathos, as each raccoon fell. Running after the baying hound and laughing with Nathan at sad-faced Doc as they stumbled through the blackness and branches. It had been a night like no other. It was the first thing he mentioned to his mother when she walked in the door.
“You what?” She could not believe her ears.
“I went on a coon hunt with Dr. Stephenson and a kid named Nathan.”
Aubrey dropped into a chair in slump-shouldered despair. “Barry, how could you?”
When he saw how his words stung her, he wished he had kept it a secret.
“Mom, it wasn’t like that. It was exciting, not cruel. We spent most of the night in the woods, but it wasn’t scary. It was awesome. We saw deer and owls, waded through streams in the dark, it was amazing!”
“Did you, ah…get…any raccoons?”
“Four.”
“Did you actually…?” She searched for a euphemism.
“‘Dispatch’ is the word Doc uses. And yes, I did one. He taught me how to shoot a rifle.”
“Oh, God!” Aubrey said, burying her face in her hands.
“Mom, that was the only part I didn’t like. And Doc said that was okay because he didn’t like that part either. But it was okay as long as you used what you dispatched.”
She knew what she was about to hear and dreaded it. “The fur, right?�
��
“He taught me how to skin a raccoon.”
Aubrey winced visibly and then shook her head wearily as Barry told the rest of his tale.
When he left, she flopped onto the bed, pulled a pillow over her head, and lay there, deflated, appalled at her son’s enthusiasm, disheartened by the ease with which he had disregarded all that she had taught him. And furious at Kent.
After a long while she pushed the pillow aside. Between clenched teeth she said, “That man is going to answer to me for this!”
Kent sat across from Aubrey in the diner, where they had agreed to meet for lunch. She picked at a limp spinach salad. He had a BLT.
“So did you get the rodeo banned in Southern California?”
“Actually no, but we haven’t given up on that yet either.”
“I’m sure.”
“The reason I asked you to meet me for lunch has nothing to do with the rodeo.” Aubrey cut her eyes around the diner to be sure no one was within earshot. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and struggled to keep her voice down. “It has to do with Barry, you son of a bitch.”
“He’s a great kid.”
“He told me you took him raccoon hunting, for Chrissake. Now I’m asking you, wasn’t there at least the slightest suspicion in your head that I might disapprove of that?”
Kent leaned back, putting space between himself and Aubrey’s long fingernails, which dug at the tabletop like bear claws.
“Actually, I saw a bored young man and felt it was an opportunity to—”
“An opportunity to what? To undermine all the values that I have instilled in my son since birth? An opportunity to get at me through him? Or just a vindictive man’s opportunity to screw up a nice kid?”
“None of those!”
“I gotta tell you, Kent. I am really pissed!”
“Give me a chance to explain.”
“Explain? Bullshit!” She was shaking. Rage and frustration churned in her eyes. “And you know what really frosts my ass? He liked it! That little SOB son of mine liked hunting with you.”
“Of course he did! I made sure he did. That’s my point. The kid is at the age where his natural instinct to hunt is peaking. You’re like some overprotective old she-bear. Cut your cub some slack.”
Taking On Lucinda Page 12