by Brian Hodge
Jess wasn’t sure he was ready for the combination of motion and sound that walking would entail, but before he could voice his concern, Mabel had peeled herself off his back and grabbed him by the arm. They were moving and Jess found himself in a curious confusion of emotion and sensation. Where Mabel had touched his skin, he felt a chilly dampness, as if he’d suddenly been soaked in icy water, though it was more than that. As they moved through the room, dodging people, coolers and furniture, he felt each brush of air against his cheek, and the scents and sounds shifted this way and that in an out-of-control collage.
They reached the back door, and slipped outside. The rear of “the swamp” was not lit, as the front, but the flickering light from the flaming barrels could be seen as a soft glow over the low-slung roof. Beyond the back door, a moonlit landscape stretched into the distance. For the first few hundred yards, there was only dirt, freshly turned and littered with clods, clumps of weeds and dry, rotting soybean plants. With a soft laugh, Mabel let go of his arm and danced out into the field. The moon shone off her hair, catching in bright glitters on her eyes as she whirled.
Jess followed more slowly, He was thinking that he’d never seen Mabel like this. She came alive in the moonlight. Shadows stretched out from her limbs, groping toward the edges of the field – toward Jess himself – then whipped away.
“Come on, Cowboy,” she called.
Jess hurried his own steps, trying to find the music she heard but understanding, somehow, that it had to be in her head, and that he wasn’t getting in there. Not even on magic junk-weed. Behind him, grunts and heavy breathing announced the presence of Teeter and Slug, but as he had when Teeter had spoken earlier, Jess delegated them to the back of his mind, backdrop for this night, this final party. Backdrop for a portrait of himself and Mabel. He sensed that they didn’t mind, or weren’t aware, or perhaps even understood that this was to be their part. They weren’t talking, and for Teeter that was a small miracle.
There was a distant hum, like the amplified voice of a powerful halogen light, or the warning breath of lightning in a thunderstorm. Jess moved across the field and felt as though he might be floating. He saw Mabel’s form dip and sway ahead, and he made for her, letting the wind fill his hair and his clothing, sail-like. If he had broken contact with the ground, suddenly, and lifted into the air he wouldn’t have blinked. Flying seemed so simple, though he didn’t attempt it. Everything was simple, drawn down to the narrowest point of perception. Mabel.
The hum grew louder. It was a growl now, filling the air. The volume rose. Mabel stopped and craned her neck, her long hair dangling behind her like a cape and her skin white and glowing softly in the moonlight. Jess came up behind her, caught her in his arms and leaned back. Too fast. Too hard. They fell together, Jess hitting first, his back pressing into the soft earth and Mabel falling against him – a pillow of perfumed flesh and soft hair that rained on his face like silk. There was no pain. He was relaxed, and the impact was more of a caress as the earth molded itself to his form, and he molded to hers.
The growl became a roar and a shadow obscured the moon. Mabel laughed, and Jess heard voices – Teeter and Slug – chattering away in the background. The sky darkened and the roar slipped directly overhead. A plane. It was a long time in coming, but the realization that it was a plane crossing overhead that was making the sound and hiding the moon slowly wound its way into Jess’ conscious thoughts. Mabel’s laughter wove in and out of the engine’s throbbing rhythm, and suddenly Jess was laughing too.
“Crazy bastard,” he whispered. “Crazy old drunken bastard.”
There was no doubt it was Leonard. No one else would be flying this time of night, without lights. A mist settled over them, and Jess’ eyes stung. He coughed. What was it? There was a taste in his mouth, a taste he should have known but couldn’t place. The air was hazy, and damp, and this time the chilly sensation on his skin was real.
Leonard was in the zone. He’d run the first two barrels out three days back, and then laid off. He didn’t want them noticing him too much, and you tended to attract attention if you crop-dusted fields you hadn’t been contracted to dust. Leonard had done it before, by accident, and he could count on them figuring it for just that, but not if he did it over and over again.
The thing was that he was getting more nervous with each passing hour. Every time he thought about the feds, rolling onto the air field in their long black cars full of slicked back hair, white shirts, black shoes and sunglasses, it was enough to put him off his feed, if he’d been eating. What he did instead was smoke. Leonard smoked a pipe, and he’d taken to spritzing some of the chemical onto the tobacco. No sense wasting all of it, he’d reasoned, when reason seemed necessary.
Truth be told, Leonard had liked that first little touch. He didn’t know what it might be doing to his insides, or to his brain, but he figured it didn’t matter all that much. You caught a buzz like this about once in lifetime, and if this was his one shot, he was riding it out. Besides, with the Old Crow to wash it down, the stuff had gotten almost mellow. The longer he spent with it, the clearer his thoughts seemed, and Leonard wasn’t a clear thinker by any stretch.
When he was thinking, though, he was thinking about those barrels. The ones he’d emptied he’d rolled into the back of his 4X4 and driven into the country. A long way into the country. He’d taken each to a different dump site, wiped it with old rags to remove fingerprints (he wasn’t sure this would help, but he’d seen enough cop shows to believe in it), and he’d buried the things in trash. They might find one. They might find all of the damned things. They wouldn’t be able to trace them back to the airfield, or to Leonard.
He knew the odds were that if they had any record of the chemical, they’d know where it had been stored, but it was also possible that they believed it was destroyed. Military men weren’t the most reliable in the universe, and those damned barrels had been there for a very long time. If he got them spread far enough apart, he might lead any future investigators away from the airfield, and that was all he wanted. Leonard wanted his little world back, and he was two barrels from completion. One of those barrels had been emptied into his tanks, and he was ready to drop it and get back.
He saw small figures moving about in the field below, and he dipped his wing at them. Everyone knew Leonard, and if they saw him, they’d expect a show. He intended to give them one. His blood pumped, he was high as a kite, and the Cessna was handling like a dream. It was all like a dream. At The Swamp, there was a lot of activity, lights and headlights cutting swaths and patterns through the darkness. Leonard almost wished he were there - but he was on a mission. With a grin, he pulled back the handle that started the fog, and dove toward the fields below.
“Dusted.”
The word stuck. The first word that Teeter or Slug had managed to register since Jess had taken his first hit off the joint.
“Dusted.”
Jess turned his head, and caught sight of Teeter rocking back and forth above him, a bizarre scarecrow metronome shadowed against the soft illumination of the moon.
“What?” Jess whispered.
Mabel turned slowly so that she lay across his prone form. Pressing her hands into the soil she lifted slightly so he could see her smile. Her eyes twinkled very brightly.
“He said “dusted,” Cowboy. That’s what Leonard does. Dusts. I guess you won’t be finding any bugs in your shorts tonight.”
Jess stared at her, working the words over in his mind, comprehension filtering up slowly and binding plane to sound to mist to bugs and all that time her eyes lowering – her lips drawing near – touching. Jess slid his fingers up through her hair, wove them in and out and then closed them gently. He held her as they kissed and the heat of that moment, molten skin and sliding tongues, bodies arched like twin bows bending into one another fiercely, nearly stole his reason.
Then Mabel was moving again. Her hair slid free of his fingers and she rocked up to her knees, then to her feet. She gr
ipped him by the front of his shirt.
“Come on Cowboy. There’s plenty of time for this,” she winked at him. “I still have things to show you. Important things.”
Jess could think of nothing in his life more important than the moment that had just passed. He controlled the urge to shake his head, having learned by this point that it would not be a cleansing motion, and he rolled to one elbow. Teeter leaned in from the shadows and held out a hand. Jess gripped it. Teeter rocked back, the most natural movement in the universe, and Jess matched it. The two rolled upright as one, Teeter released Jess, and they both rocked in opposite directions. Jess righted himself, and Teeter, grinning, but still silent, continued to sway. Off to one side, Slug stood watching. His eyes lit up suddenly as Jess met his gaze, and the big man’s flaccid lips parted gently. He spoke without sound, whispering, breathing the words into the night sky. Jess didn’t need to hear them, he knew.
“Gonna … party!”
Mabel was heading for the edge of the Murphy’s soybean fields. There had been no harvest for Tommy and Dickey. Not yet, and that probably meant not at all. They’d missed the prime season, and the plants, though still green and heavy with beans, were beyond their prime. It had been several years since the Murphys had given much serious thought to farming. If it hadn’t been necessary to hide their illicit sideline in a mass of greenery, they’d have given it up altogether. As it was, Jess thought, only a moron would use a two foot soybean plant to hide a five foot marijuana plant, and only right on the edge of the swamp could you get away with it. Rules had a way of bending in the wild, and the further from town the weed was grown, the less likely it was to be found.
When Jess hit the edge of the soybeans, he could already make out a dark patch near the center of the field. Mabel was moving down the rows, hopping from one to the next, making another dance of it. More than once, as he moved more slowly in her wake, Jess wondered how she kept from falling. She leaped and whirled, landing nimbly between plants and avoiding the trailing, snaking weeds and vines that threatened to choke them.
“Hurry up, Cowboy,” she called. “With the moon this bright, you can see everything.”
Jess sped his pace. Beyond the field, far enough away that they twinkled like fireflies, he could just make out headlights. It was State Road 47, angling its way along the swamp toward 17 and the world beyond. The lights winked at him and Jess licked his suddenly dry lips. When had that happened, and why hadn’t he thought to bring a beer? The taste was bitter, and it sizzled in the back of his throat. It made him thirstier, for a moment, but then the sensation faded and he ran. He didn’t know why, beyond the fact he was tired of waiting to catch up with Mabel. She’d disappeared into the center of the field, but her laughter floated back to Jess on the breeze.
Behind, he heard Teeter and Slug’s ponderous steps fading, until he leaped the last row of beans and twisted his body to slide between two towering, leafy plants, and he couldn’t hear them at all.
Jess had expected to wander into a small jungle, but when he came to a halt, leaning to place his hands on his knees and wonder where the energy and grace of seconds past had gone, he found himself in a clearing. He was surrounded on all sides, five-leaved green fingers fluttering and the deep scent of bruised hemp filling his lungs with each heaving breath. The running had seemed effortless, but the lie in the image was burning down his throat and rasping into his lungs. He felt his heartbeat trip-hammering wildly, and his vision faded to a dull, unfocused haze.
“Hey, Cowboy,” Mabel whispered. She didn’t seem to be fighting for her breath. She was lying on her back in the center of the small clearing, hair spread like a dark halo around her pale, moonlit face. Her shirt was open to the waist, baring her ample, curving breasts, and Jess saw that the cool air had hardened her nipples. The buttons of her jeans were unfastened, though they still rode high on her hips, inviting. “Thought you’d never get here,” she whispered.
Fighting to free his gaze, Jess glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t hear the other two, but he knew they were there. He thought of Teeter, rocking over each row, hitting a rhythm and keeping it as slug ploughed behind, kicking the plants and dirt out of his way mindlessly.
He turned back to Mabel. She slid one hand under her waistband and stroked herself, body arched toward him and lips parted.
“Holy shit,” Jess breathed, not letting the words form sound.
He moved forward slowly and dropped to his knees between Mabel’s legs. He didn’t touch her, except that his knees brushed the insides of her thighs.
“Teeter,” he said softly, “and Slug. They’ll be here any minute.”
Mabel’s eyes danced, her hand slid more deeply between her legs and she arched her back, pressing the zipper of her jeans against him. She let out a little moan.
Jess let his palms come to rest on her thighs and slid them upward, passing to the smooth bare flesh of her belly and cupping her breasts with a thumb on each nipple. He trembled, and though somewhere in the distant reaches of his mind the image of Teeter and Slug drawing nearer would not release him, he had no strength to resist. The sizzling in the back of his throat was constant now, and his eyes felt as if they were too sensitive, cold around the edges and watering.
Mabel squirmed. Her hands had wound their way around the waist of her jeans and she slid them down. Jess dropped his hands down and around, cupping her near-perfect ass.
“See something you like, Cowboy?” Mabel whispered? She leaned up, wriggled out of her shirt and shook her hair back. Then, hands on the ground behind her, she ground herself against him. Jess, shaking with a desire beyond anything he’d ever known, gripped her jeans and rocked up and back, sliding them to her ankles, tangling them in her boots and slipping past them to press into her flesh.
Very far away, an air horn sounded. A truck, bound for parts unknown, bound out of this God-forsaken wasteland down the snaking, winding road. Jess heard it. Something deep inside latched onto it. It was the voice of the road, the voice he’d heard and yearned for a thousand lonely nights. Mabel moved against him more insistently, and he unfastened his jeans, slipping them down over his hips. The cool air on his erection nearly sent him reeling and he rocked forward, plunging in deep. Mabel’s legs wrapped him tightly and pulled him closer.
The road disappeared from his mind. The fields and the swamp disappeared. Nothing existed but the single, swollen, super-heated connection he shared with the woman writhing beneath him in the dirt. He thought of that, ground down harder as if he might plant her, as if she might grow and reproduce and bring a harvest of dark-haired dancing beauties to lead men through the fields. Her eyes shone and he leaned closer. He brushed her lips with his own and drove harder with his hips. She bucked and he matched it, slid to the side and he followed. Nothing could come between them, nothing could part them.
She was screaming. In a long, slow revelation the sound cleared in his head and he drove harder. Her head was thrown back, and her nails had dug deeply into his back. He wanted to scream himself, to growl and grip her hair and fling her deeper into the dirt, but something held him. Something in the sound. Something discordant.
He watched her and her eyes opened. They were blurred, deep black sockets. Her nails dug at the skin over his heart, not his back, and then her palms pummeled his chest. Jess held tightly. He’d never seen her like this, but the heat was incredible, and he knew she felt it, that she rode the same wave and they would crash together.
“Jess!”
He heard the word, but her voice wasn’t right. It was too deep. It was.
“JESS!”
Teeter.
Jess spun, sliding free of Mabel’s hot, slick form and growling in rage. The idiot had come up behind him, was standing there and swaying back and forth. It was dark, but the metronomic shadow was impossible to mistake.
“Get out,” Jess growled.
Mabel was moving, and he reached for her – too slow – too late. She was clutching her jeans and moving.
Another chase? The anger burned white-hot as Jess rose, nearly tripped over his jeans where they bunched around his ankles, felt the sudden gracelessness of it all and yanked them into place. A new sound rose and caught his attention; rhythmic, heaving breath. Crying? Someone was crying.
He turned, and he saw that Mabel was pawing at her jeans, trying to pull them back into place. He took a step toward her and she backed way, tripping and falling through the wall of tall, green plants.
“JESS!” Teeter again.
“What the FUCK do you want?” Jess asked, whipping around. “What in the holy hell do you want, you bobbing, rocking moron? Do you know what just happened? Do you know what we were doing? Do you know that only TWO people are supposed to be involved?”
Teeter stared at him. There was anger in the expression, hurt, resentment, and something else. Fear? Good, the fucker should be scared. What in God’s name had the idiot been thinking?
“You were killing her,” Teeter said finally. He didn’t move closer, and his voice was matter-of-fact, as if reciting lines for a school play – and badly. “You were killing her Jess. She was screaming. Didn’t you hear?”
Jess stared incredulously. Screaming? Of course she’d been screaming. They’d been … it had.
He turned. Mabel was pulled up in a tiny heap in the greenery. The moonlight that had played so beautifully over her hair earlier in the evening now gave her a washed-out, corpse-like pallor. Her face was stained, smeared with dirt, and – what? Tears? It seemed too dark.
Teeter was forgotten again, as Jess moved toward her. He started to kneel beside her, but she saw him coming and screeched, back-pedaling through the weeds and pot and dirt like some sort of out-of-control crab.
“Wait,” Jess said, reaching toward her. “Mabel wait. What’s wrong?”
Images flashed. He saw her on the ground, felt his hips grinding, crashing into her. Felt her silky hair in his fingers. Felt her pounding and pounding at his chest. Jess glanced down. His shirt was in shreds, and he felt, very suddenly, the cold / hot / wet trickle of blood as it soaked into the material. His mind was whirling. He heard steps behind him and whirled too fast.