Rumrunners

by Eric Beetner

  “Well, he said one more delivery and he would take the same opinion.”

  “What is it?”

  “Pick up a delivery on the Canadian border. Drive it back here. That’s it.”

  Calvin did more calculating. “Hmm.”

  “I told him I’d think about it.” Tucker stared at Calvin, ready to meet his eye. “And I thought about it.”

  Calvin obliged and turned back to him. “And?”

  “I don’t want to do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, this last job almost got us killed, for one. And also if I’m not trying to find Dad then I’m through pretending to be a criminal.”

  “Oh, I hate to brake it to you, Tuck. You ain’t pretending anymore.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “So you came up with a plan to pay back the money?”

  “No. But what can he do? If he comes after us, we turn in his brother for killing Dad.”

  Calvin rose to refill his coffee cup. “I’ll ignore that based on the fact that it is so shit-all stupid it doesn’t deserve a reply. And what’s with this ‘through trying to find your dad’ bullshit? Webb got himself found. Now we have to find us a killer.”

  “We know who the killer is and we can’t touch him.”

  “Says who? We take the job. It keeps us close to the Stanleys for a little while longer. Long enough to dig around and find out where Kirby is. And you know he didn’t do it alone. I want anyone who had a hand in it.”

  Tucker narrowed his eyes a bit. “Are you sure you don’t just want to do another run? I get the feeling you’re enjoying this little temp job of ours.”

  “No more than you are,” Calvin said, lifting the coffee cup to his lips. Tucker blushed a little. “I’ve seen the way you took to driving that car. It’s bubbling up in you, Tuck. From deep down like a Texas gusher letting loose with a reserve that’s been hiding for a long, long time.”

  “Doesn’t mean I want to drive to Canada.”

  Calvin sat back down, leaning in close over the table. “We need their trust. I say we do the job. I say we catch us a murdering son of a bitch.”

  Tucker looked away then quickly brought his eyes back to Calvin’s. “I’m not a criminal.”

  “No. You’re a McGraw.”

  Calvin put a hand over Tucker’s. His granddad’s flesh felt unpolished and frayed. A life lived. Tucker felt his own hand under the sandpaper of Calvin’s. Smooth. Lifeless. A hand that hadn’t been places or done anything. Skin that wore gloves to chop wood, that one time he ever did chop wood. The palm covering his hand, rough from decades of shifting gears, comforted like a worn piece of fabric.

  He stared into Calvin’s clear blue eyes, no trace of a hangover, and said, “I’ll drive.”

  18

  Calvin made the phone call. Hugh had been cheerful about their acceptance and sympathetic to their loss. After they hung up Calvin turned to Tucker, “Glad they don’t have smell-o-phones ’cause that was some serious bullshit.”

  Hugh had detailed the plan to drive north through Minnesota. Up around Baudette they would meet with two locals who would take them to the border. “It’s not like Mexico,” he assured them. “No fences and no one gives a shit.”

  They would meet a small truck, the Canadian drivers would get out, they would get in and come home. Simple as that.

  “Easy enough,” Calvin said.

  “What’s the hitch?” Tucker asked.

  “Remains to be seen.”

  The meet was scheduled for midnight, the drive a solid nine hours plus. They had time for lunch before they hit the road but that was about it.

  “First things first, we steal a car.”

  Tucker nearly dropped his ham and cheese sandwich. “What? Why?”

  “We have to leave it there, don’t we?”

  “Why not take the orange car?”

  “The Superbird is a classic. I’m not ditching it in a field so some Canadian can take it across the border and use it to drive to hockey games. That car is American and it’s gonna stay in America.”

  Tucker found it increasingly difficult to avoid criminality in his new life as a criminal.

  “We don’t have time.”

  “Bullshit. I haven’t met a car yet I couldn’t steal in under two minutes. It’ll be shorter than a piss break on the road.”

  “Fine. But get one with a heater.”

  “I’ll do you one better and get those ass warming seats.”

  Hugh choked the neck of his corn liquor bottle in one hand and lifted the lid on the ice bucket with the other, but found only tepid water inside. He slumped his shoulders and called to the blonde.

  “Erin!”

  Wyatt stood by patiently, glad that he had refused a drink. That hillbilly firewater never appealed to him anyway.

  “Just tell me everything is set,” Hugh said.

  “It is. I still don’t know why we’re sending them all the way to Canada when we can do it just as well right here.”

  “We need the delivery, don’t we? And besides,” Hugh gripped the lid in his hand. “Erin!” He slammed the ice bucket shut and the bottles all applauded his strength. “Having headless bodies turn up in our own backyard isn’t exactly good for business.”

  “Bodyless heads.”

  “Shut the fuck up. The point is, better to do it in a pine forest eight hundred miles from here. Don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.”

  Hugh continued wringing the neck of the bottle, anxious to get inside.

  “The guys, they’re trustworthy?”

  “Best in the business.”

  “That’s obviously not true or they wouldn’t be working out of Minnesota. What I want to know is, can they deliver the truck? You know how important this package is to us, right?”

  “They can drive a goddamn truck. How hard is that?”

  Hugh shook his head. “One thing I’ll say about the McGraws—this thorn in my side bullshit notwithstanding—they had pride in their work. You think a driver is just a driver? You’ve never seen an artist at work. It’s the end of an era right here.”

  Hugh looked down at his corn hooch bottle. He thought back to the days of running cases of the stuff down out of the hills and into town. Slipping right under the noses of the cops, all with a McGraw at the wheel.

  “Erin!”

  Tucker snuck away into the bedroom for a few minutes to make a phone call. His secretary, Annabelle, had been the only other employee in the office for six years. She was dutiful and smartish and he had given over several lower level clients to her for practice. He liked mentoring and the special attention made her work all the harder.

  Of course she was at her desk.

  “Mr. McGraw, I was starting to worry.”

  “Yeah, sorry Annabelle. Look, I’m going to be a few more days. Family emergency. I need you to hold down the fort. Is that okay?”

  “You’ve had a lot of phone calls Mr. McGraw.”

  A lot for his office meant more than five, fewer than ten.

  “I know you can handle it, Annabelle.”

  “I’ll do my best. Is everything okay?”

  “It’s my dad’s health. We’ve got some things to figure out.”

  “Oh my God. I hope he’s okay.”

  “He’ll be fine I’m sure. I need a few more days, that’s all.”

  “Okay Mr. McGraw. Can I call you if I have any questions?”

  “Sure Annabelle. Any time.”

  “Thanks. You take care now. My best to your daddy.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tucker started to doubt the intelligence of handing over his office to such a gullible girl.

  “We need to stop for beer on the way out of town,” Calvin said.

  “Stop for—no way. Why do you need beer when we’re driving?”

  “You said you were driving.”

  “Well, maybe not the whole way. I’d like to know that’s at least an option.”

  “A six-pac
k then.”

  Before he closed the door behind them, Tucker heard voices. Urgent whispers that men used only when doing something they shouldn’t. He held up a hand to stop Calvin behind him and cocked an ear like a dog. Calvin listened too.

  Tucker began a slow advance around the bushes that ran along the front of his house and took the path curving right that led to the garage. He stepped on the grass patches in between the squares of concrete to keep his footsteps quiet.

  The garage door was open. Peering around the corner he saw three men grouped around the Superbird, Ambrose in the middle working a slim jim at the window.

  “Just break it,” whispered a cousin on Ambrose’s right.

  “No way, man. You know how much it costs to replace a window?”

  Calvin leaned out around Tucker to see what the action was. The sandwich bag in his hand crinkled and the trio of would-be car thieves turned in unison.

  Calvin dropped the bag and moved forward. “Hey! That’s not your car anymore.”

  Ambrose stayed pressed flat against the driver’s side door while the two cousins stepped up to meet Calvin midway. The man on the right raised a short stick that Tucker thought he recognized as a juggling pin. Shorter than a baseball bat and fat at one end. A weapon either way you measured it.

  Defenseless, Calvin surged to meet them. The club raised up and smashed down on Calvin’s skull. He managed to get an arm up to block it part way, but the pop of wood against bone still sounded painful. Calvin went down.

  Tucker slid forward into the garage and went for the shelf-lined walls. He grabbed for anything he could repurpose as a weapon. He lifted off the first thing his hand came across—a paint can.

  He swung the gallon can on its thin wire handle and caught Ambrose across the back. The lid burst open and a thick spray of monkeyshit brown paint coated the hood of the car and Ambrose sunk to his knees clutching behind him at a pain he could not reach.

  Both cousins advanced on Tucker and he silently thanked them for not staying and beating his granddad to death on his front lawn.

  The empty can had lost its weight and therefore its usefulness so Tucker dropped it and scanned the shelves again for help. He picked up a chainsaw and spun to face his attackers who recoiled until the bright orange power cord slithered off the shelf behind him like a dead snake falling from a tree. A powerless chainsaw was about as intimidating as a bowl of pudding. Tucker threw it down to the concrete floor.

  Ambrose stood and shook his arms out to throw off some of the paint. The two cousins stepped over the inert chainsaw. The one with the club took the lead.

  Tucker ran his hands over the shelves, throwing glances over his shoulder as the men advanced. He reached the back wall of the carport and was penned in. On the floor beside him was a flower pot stuffed with a quarter-full bag of topsoil, a pair of dirt-caked work gloves and a set of handheld garden shears. He bent to pick up the shears.

  He brandished the blades out in front of him and snapped them shut a few times in case the men forgot what garden shears did. The thin snick of the dirty blades snapping together sounded like someone clipping toenails. A snub-nosed pair of scissors, that’s all they were.

  The cousin with the club smiled. He stepped forward, enjoying the game.

  “Knock his fucking head in, Hector,” Ambrose said.

  Hector griped the club in his right hand and beckoned Tucker forward with the fingers on his left. An invitation to dance.

  Tucker kept snapping the shears like a baby crocodile as he moved side to side against the back wall of the carport.

  “You know my cousin Tío is still in a cast from that shit you pulled on the highway,” Ambrose said. Tucker figured Tío was one of the men who flew out of the bed of the truck. As bad as he felt for Tío, it came as good news since Tucker thought the man was dead.

  “We took that car fair and square. You owed my father a debt.”

  “And I’ll pay it. It takes a little time. But, now you’re pissing me off.”

  Hector swung the club at the shears. The wood slapped the blades, but Tucker held on. Hector’s grin grew wider.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Tucker said. “You let me keep the car for two more days and I’ll bring it back to you.”

  “Now?” Ambrose waved his arms out at the car like a Price is Right model. “Look at it. You ruined it.”

  Hector swung again. Tucker dodged and snapped the shears shut. They bit the air like a defanged cobra.

  Tucker’s footwork had taken him to the far wall of the carport. Boxed in again. His foot hit something and he looked down for a moment to see hedge trimmers. Same concept as the shears only bigger. He bent down and in one motion dropped the shears and came back up with the trimmer gripped in both hands.

  Hector’s grin faded slightly. The second cousin rounded the far side of the car, flanking Tucker’s position.

  Ambrose held out his hand. “Give me the keys. Maybe I can get to a car wash before this shit dries.”

  “Two days is all I need.”

  “Fuck you, man. Now it’s on principle. I can’t let you steal my car, fuck with me and my cousins. It don’t look right, man.”

  Hector swung again at the air in front of Tucker and Tucker snapped back with the trimmers. They made a better sound, at least a medium-sized dog. The upgrade in weapons didn’t do much about the whole three-to-one thing.

  The second cousin came closer. He moved along a set of shelves on his side and he stopped when he reached a row of jars filled with different sized nails and screws. Tucker wished he’d been on that side of the carport instead of the garden side.

  A mason jar full of silver screws came sailing toward him. Tucker dipped his head and the jar bounced off his shoulder and smashed on the back wall of the carport sending hundreds of tiny screws in all directions. Hector stepped up and swung closer with the club. Tucker was too off-balance to strike back with the trimmers.

  Another jar, of nails this time, came at him low and fast. Tucker thrust a hip sideways to avoid the crashing jar of shrapnel and Hector lunged again.

  Tucker slapped out with the trimmers, closed and non-threatening, and hit the club as it aimed for him. Hector stepped up, determined to finish the fight. Behind them Ambrose shouted something in Spanish.

  Hector raised the club again and brought it down with all the force of his body weight on Tucker’s left shoulder which he lifted to protect his head. The swing moved Hector off-balance and instinctively his left hand reached out to steady himself. Tucker snapped out with the trimmers like an angry bird defending its nest.

  A scream filled the narrow carport and Tucker saw two fingers arcing through the air trailed by tiny droplets of blood that seemed to be reaching to make it back inside the dark comfort of a vein.

  The second cousin stood frozen with another jar of nails at the ready. Hector dropped the club and jammed his three-fingered hand under his armpit as he stepped back until he whacked his head on the high spoiler perched on the trunk of the Superbird. Finally that thing showed some use.

  The second cousin threw the jar, but made the toss as a retreat maneuver the way you would hurl a rock at a grizzly bear before you ran for your life. Tucker swung the trimmers like a baseball bat and caught the jar mid-flight. The glass shattered and rained three penny nails over Tucker, marking his face and arms with dozens of tiny cuts.

  Hector had turned and stumbled for the exit past Ambrose. When he hit the slick of paint on the concrete floor his feet betrayed him and he fell flat on his back, the three-fingered hand reaching out for some support, but only slamming into the rear door of the Bird, smearing the paint with blood to go along with the orange base coat and shit-brown highlights.

  Ambrose bent to lift his cousin, looking at Tucker like he was seeing Jason and Freddy and Michael Myers all rolled into one. Tucker stood with the blades of the trimmer open before him, a spatter of blood on top of the dirt and rust. Tiny dots of his own blood rose from the nail cuts and they gave him a craze
d psychopath look.

  “You’re fucking crazy, man,” Ambrose said as he and his cousin slipped on the paint as they backed out of the carport.

  Tucker heard an engine start. The second cousin had already reached the truck. He went wide around the non-paint splattered side of the car and watched as Ambrose helped his injured cousin across the lawn like file footage of Vietnam. All that was missing was the hovering helicopter and some palm trees.

  Calvin was sitting up on the grass.

  Tucker went to him and stuck the blades of the hedge trimmers into the lawn next to him.

  “You okay?”

  Calvin pulled a palm away from his head that was smeared with blood. “They got me good.”

  “It’s alright. I got them better.”

  Twenty minutes later Calvin was cleaned up and ready to go.

  Tucker hosed down the Plymouth and most of the paint came off. The seams and joints all held a new brown edging but the windshield was clear. After he put away the hose, bucket and scrub brush he took a plastic grocery bag out to the carport and picked up the fingers the way he used to pick up Pinky’s shit on the lawn.

  “You ought to keep those as a souvenir,” Calvin said from behind him.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  “Hell of a thing. Wish I’d seen it.”

  “I’ll paint you a picture.”

  Tucker dropped the bag into a green plastic garbage can and shut the lid.

  19

  They never did steal a car. By the time they got on the road it was getting late so they decided to take the Superbird and leave it in Minnesota. A final fuck you to Ambrose and his three-fingered cousins.

  Aside from Tucker making a phone call to Milo telling him not to get any bright ideas about coming over that night—he wouldn’t be home—the trip had been quiet.

  He and Calvin made small talk. Calvin kept checking his map. Webb’s name never came up, nor did Calvin’s plans once this job was completed and their debt erased.

  They passed through Bemidji about seven hours into the drive with Tucker behind the wheel for the entire run. They had entered the real ten thousand lakes part of Minnesota. They both remarked how grateful they were it wasn’t winter.