3 A Brewski for the Old Man

by Phyllis Smallman

  “Morning,” I answered and tried to smile. My bones hurt. From the way Tully was limping as he walked back and forth along the edge of the hammock, searching every clump, every tree, I figured a night on the ground had been even harder on him. I pushed back the blanket and got to my feet. “See anything?”

  “Nope. Let’s get started.”

  I folded the blanket, stuffing it back in the duffel that had served as our pillow.

  “We’ll be across the lake and gone before they’re up,” he said as he righted the canoe.

  I looked at my watch. We’d be back at the truck before seven. I slipped into the bushes for a pee, pushing the wet branches from in front of me cautiously, watching for snakes and bugs and trying my best to stay dry. Everything was sodden like we’d had a rain, the whole world dripping with dew.

  When I came back, the canoe and Tully were gone. Panic, full out and complete, set me dancing with anxiety. “No, no,” I moaned. A low keening wail escaped from my throat, fear no longer keeping me quiet but making me want to scream into the sky.

  Tully burst from the trees, in a crouch with the rifle ready. “What?” he growled.

  I swung to face him. “I couldn’t see you. I thought you were gone.”

  He lowered the gun. “You thought I left without you? That’s stupid. I went to have a look around.”

  “You did before,” I accused. “You left me before.”

  “One time.” He held his forefinger in the air. “Once.”

  “You left me behind at a bootlegger’s.”

  “Keep your voice down. Sound carries on the water.” I was still upset, still angry and frightened after all those years, but I lowered my voice and I whispered, “I woke up and you were gone. There I was all alone with those strange old men playing cards. Who takes a kid to an illegal poker game? Who forgets they brought a kid with them?”

  “I wasn’t used to having a kid trailing along behind me. I came back for you as soon as I remembered.”

  I was five again and couldn’t let it go. “It was a Sunday night. Ruth Ann was waiting tables at the Rookery and you were supposed to look after me. You took me with you to a floating card game at a bootlegger’s. It was late, I fell asleep on the floor on someone’s coat in that little room next door.” My voice rose, but caution fought it back to a lip-curling snarl. “I woke up when the guy came for his coat. You were gone…I was five years old.” I poked my chest with a forefinger to make sure he knew who I was talking about. “You left me.”

  “Yeah, well I’m sorry ’bout that. Like I said, I forgot. Anyway, your mother made me pay for it. I didn’t get to see you for nearly a year and she wouldn’t let me move back in.” He frowned at me, head to one side, while he dug deep into the past. “I went to your school once, called to you when you came out of the school gate. You turned around and ran away like a rabid dog was chasing you.” Hurt and indignation at being treated this way furrowed his forehead. Tully didn’t get it.

  “Is it any wonder? I wasn’t going to give you another chance to leave me behind.”

  “You didn’t tell your mother I was at the school though, did you?”

  The “no” came out reluctant and slow.

  He looked pleased. “I guessed you hadn’t or she would have called and given me hell.”

  “Sorry I acted like a fool just now.” I hate to apologize more than anything in the world. “Guess I’m a bit jumpy.”

  He just headed away with me on his heels. When we got to the canoe he said, “Stands to reason you’d be nervous.” He put the rifle in the craft and tossed the duffel in after it. “You ain’t used to sleeping rough.”

  He squatted down beside the canoe and stared across the marsh before he said, “My life and my existence are like this.” He reached down and wrote in the water with his finger. “Like writing my name on water — gone as it happens.” He looked up at me. “Only thing I leave behind is you and the ones that come after you.” He stood. “You’re the only good thing ’bout me. I’ll never let you go.”

  He motioned to the canoe and held it while I entered and then he pushed the canoe through the reeds and out into the water of the narrow channel.

  We were nearly through the reed bed back on the lake. The stream split, going either side of a small treed hammock covered with dense plantings — a small rookery where birds roosted for the night. The trees hanging down to the water were dripping with white ibis and stilt-legged herons. As we broke cover and glided towards the rookery, a cloud of birds rose in the frail light, circled and swept over head. Hundreds of birds, calling harshly to others, lifted into the air while behind them, in ragged stick nests, their young screamed out to their parents.

  “That’s cut it,” Tully said. “If they’re watching and they’re smart, they’ll know we’re here.”

  We swept around a bend while behind us the flock disappeared below the trees, settling back into their nests.

  Tully steered us close to the bank, sheltering beneath low-hanging shrubbery, the only cover available at the edge of this marshy area.

  I looked over my shoulder, questioning. He put a finger to his lips. He reached out and grabbed the branches and pulled the canoe deeper into the cover. I did likewise, hunkering down into the canoe, letting the grasses spread back along the edge of our craft.

  I listened hard, harder than I ever had in my life but there were no voices, no soft sounds of an electric motor, no splashing against gunnels. It was as if even nature held her breath. We stayed like this for some time, waiting until Tully said, “Okay,” and then we pushed away from the shore. “Maybe we got lucky.”

  Maybe. But then again, maybe not.

  C H A P T E R 3 7

  Within seconds of breaking cover we were on them. Why hadn’t we heard them? Guilt, always there and willing to jump up and tell me everything was my fault said it was probably because Tully and I were locked in the past and not paying attention to the present.

  The three guys were drifting towards us, eyes glued on the bank, bodies leaning forward in search mode. And what they were hunting for was us.

  Behind me Tully planted his paddle to stop our forward motion and to swing us around. I dug in, thinking, “It’s going to work, it’s going to work.” There was only ten feet of open water to cross and then we’d be hidden from view behind a jut of land and able to take cover. And then from my pocket came a ringing noise. The wet cell phone, against all likelihood, was working again. And I hadn’t shut it off.

  I was wrong about two paddlers being able to outrun an electric motor.

  To our left was the solid land of a hammock, to our right open water. Tully swung the canoe to face the shore as the sound of a gun echoed.

  “Down,” Tully screamed. I was down below the gunnels before his voice stopped reverberating across the water. “Back off,” he shouted. I peeked around to where Tully knelt in the bottom of the canoe, the rifle raised to his shoulder. I lifted my head over the edge of the boat.

  “We don’t mean you no harm,” Tattoo Man said, but the rifle in his hands put the lie to his words. “Just wanted to see who else was on the lake.”

  “If you don’t mean no harm, just turn around and get going,” Tully told him.

  The men shifted uneasily, trying to catch each other’s eye and see what the next move was, trying to guess how it was going to play out. “Sure,” said Tattoo Man. “Sure, we’re going, no reason to get upset.” He held the rifle out high, away from his body.

  Tully waited. I saw the large bearded man in the back of the craft shift, saw him reach into the bottom of the aluminum boat for something and saw him straighten. But then, so did Tully. “Leave it lay or he’s a dead man,” Tully yelled.

  Hard to say what the bearded man planned, for at that instant out of the bottom of the boat something large reared up. The man screamed and stood up. In his hand was a rifle. He pointed down at the alligator and before the gun was to his shoulder he fired. And then the man in the front of the boat screamed and
grabbed his leg. The alligator was on the bearded man before the boat tipped. The man screamed some more in a high falsetto, shrieking in pain and fear. He didn’t stop screaming when he hit the water, didn’t stop screaming until he was dragged under.

  The tattooed man went after the gator and its victim, trying to run, pushing the boat away from him to get at the bearded man even as he fell.

  We were moving as well, shooting forward without my help, to get to the man in the jaws of the gator. But it was hard to see what was happening. The water was beaten into white froth as the alligator rolled over and over, showing first its dark back and then its pale belly. The heavy rope around his body was unraveling, snaking along in the water, jerking back and forth like it was a living thing.

  Locked in the gator’s jaws, the man beat his arms against the water, struggling to pull loose; but as the gator rolled, it took the man with it. The man’s piercing screams sounded as he broke the surface and faded as he went under, twirled in the maws of death.

  The tattooed man tackled the alligator, jumping on its back and trying to do…I know not what. The gator rolled, taking the second man with him.

  Tully was shouting, “Back off, back off,” at the second man. The guy wasn’t listening.

  “I can’t get a shot,” Tully said as we watched in horror as the water churned with man and beast.

  The tattooed man let go of the gator, scrambling to his feet and gasping for breath just as the animal rolled again. The thrust of its spiked tail caught the nearly drowned man, knocking him backwards into the water.

  Tully moved fast. As the gator finished his barrel roll, Tully was waiting. The barrel of the gun was up against the gator. The recoil shot us backwards, the sound exploding in our ears. And then nothing. We rocked gently away from the scene of carnage.

  The tattooed man recovered first, trying to run in the knee-deep water and calling, “Tom, Tom.”

  Death relaxed the giant jaws. His victim floated free. The tattooed man took the man’s body in his arms, brushing his long, straggly hair back from his face. “He’s killed, he’s dead,” the man wailed to the sky.

  I saw the third man on the bank where he’d pulled himself up. I could see the crimson patch seeping from beneath his fingers.

  “Paddle,” Tully ordered.

  “Aren’t we going to help?”

  The look he threw me was the only reply I needed. I started to paddle. I wanted to protest but it would be a waste on Tully; even begging wouldn’t help here. We paddled fast. I wasn’t sure if we were still running away or it was from the adrenalin pumping through our veins.

  Within five minutes we were on their camp at the mouth of the river. We could see very little of it from the water, just the remains of a fire with three aluminum lawn chairs before it. Anyone passing by farther out on the lake wouldn’t even notice it was there, but for the putrid smell of rotting meat, foul and fetid. Two rigs were backed into the brush and from a tree hung the hide of a gator. Tully swung us in closer.

  He handed me the gun. “Stay low and don’t be afraid to use it.”

  I could barely hear his quiet words over the panting of my breath. He slid a sealed plastic pack of ammo along the bottom of the canoe; all the time he watched the camp. “Maybe there was just the three,” he whispered. “But I hate surprises.”

  He used a paddle to work us a little way closer, cautiously watching.

  Finally he called, “Hello the camp.” No answer.

  “Your men are in trouble out on the lake,” he shouted. Still nothing.

  “Two of them are injured.” Only silence.

  He got cautiously out of the canoe in water halfway up his calf and pushed the little vessel offshore. “Lay off a bit,” he said. “’Til I see if anyone’s home. If there’s trouble, head upstream and don’t stop.”

  I watched him wade into the bank, wanting to call him back. Tully climbed the bank, stood with hands on his hips and helloed once more. Then he started for the campsite.

  C H A P T E R 3 8

  I unbuttoned my pocket and dug out the cell. The signal was loud and clear. I pushed in Styles’ number but didn’t hit Send. I waited, cell in my left hand, rifle in my right.

  Tully reached the first rig and pounded on the door. No one answered. I watched him open the door and disappear inside, leaving the door agape.

  He seemed to be gone for a long time. What should I do? The rifle or the cell? There wasn’t anyone to shoot, so that left the cell.

  Tully jumped from the rig as I was about to hit the Send button. He didn’t seem in a hurry like he was being chased — he just hadn’t bothered with the step. He ambled back towards me. I slipped the cell back into my pocket and put both hands on the rifle, watching the underbrush behind him.

  Tully splashed through the water, grabbed onto the side of the canoe and pulled it to him while I watched the camp.

  “Well?” I asked.

  Tully said, “As my daddy used to say, ‘Call in the dogs and piss on the fire, it’s time to go home.’” The canoe rocked gently as he entered it. “No bad news there?”

  “Nope, you can put that gun away, sugar.”

  All the same I kept my eyes on the brush around the camp as he picked up his paddle and steered us out into deeper water.

  I turned on the seat and watched behind us and asked again, “Well?”

  “Guess you should put that thing down before you hurt yourself,” he told me.

  I put the rifle across my knees but I didn’t pick up the paddle.

  “They was from Ohio, all right.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and held it up. “Fools left this on their countertop with Ziggy’s address on it. We found the right guys.”

  “Are we just going to leave them out there to die?”

  “I don’t care one way or t’other if they do but I can see it would bother you some. You always did have a tender heart.” He looked saddened by this shortcoming in me. “Used their cell to call the Venice police. Let’s go home, little girl.”

  I let out a huge sigh of relief. Later, I promised myself, I’d tell him a thirty-one-year-old-woman, standing five-foot-seven and weighing a hundred and forty pounds stark naked, wasn’t a little girl. But not yet. The day was clear and bright and already warm. The sky, a perfect blue with cotton batting clouds, hung over the lake in a broad dome. Not yet. I was still too happy just to be alive to take offense. I’d be back in fighting form soon enough. But not yet.

  I pointed the rifle at the sky and leaned back to hand it to Tully. He took it from me and emptied the chamber before slipping the rifle into its sleeve.

  I laughed at nothing and said, “Call in the dogs and piss on the fire, it’s time to go home.”

  Tully pulled his crapped-out pickup under the portico of the Tradewinds condos. I squawked my door open and propped a muddy shoe up on the hinge. It had been a quiet drive home. We’d mostly watched the scenery go by and it seemed we’d been gone for months or at least weeks, but it hadn’t been much more than thirteen hours.

  Tully said, “Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?”

  “Hell, yeah! No one can say Tully Jenkins isn’t a fun date.”

  “So we’ll do it again sometime?”

  “Sure thing. About thirty more years ought to be about right.”

  Tully huffed with laughter. Then I started in laughing, not sure why, but I laughed until I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t talk, although I was still trying to do both. Tears ran down my face and both Tully and I were well into craziness when someone came up beside me and shouted. “Where in hell have you been?”

  Why do I have this effect on men? I seem able to turn the nicest, most sensible, reasonable man into a raving lunatic. Not quite the kind of passion a girl wants to generate.

  Tully hugged the steering wheel and leaned forward so he could see past me to the guy doing the yelling.

  “Why haven’t you returned my calls?” Styles demanded before I’d even answered his first question.


  Tully wiped tears from his face with the flat of his hand. “This guy going to be a problem, little girl?”

  I looked back to Styles and said, “Not for me.”

  Styles jerked his head towards Tully and asked, “Who is he?” “None of your business.” Just like that my temper was off, heading for the fences. Sweetness and light never lasts long with me.

  Now Styles noticed the state of my clothes and the crappy condition of pretty much my whole body. “Holy shit, what in hell happened to you?”

  “Nothin’ good,” I said, but a cautious voice warned me to be real careful, no need to share all I knew. “Spent the evening with my daddy. We went fishing.”

  He looked around me at Tully, who waggled a couple of fingers at him.

  Styles looked back at me. “Might want to try using a pole next time. No need to jump right in there.”

  “I slipped in a ditch.”

  “Yeah? Why’d you decide to stay there all night?”

  “Bugger off.” He stepped back as I hopped out of the truck.

  “See ya, Tully,” I said and slammed the door. Tully took off in a cloud of noxious fumes but when he hit the pavement he pulled into the curb and parked, not ready yet to believe Styles wasn’t about to give me a real hard time. I gave him a big smile and an even bigger wave and started for the front door, Styles bird-dogging me. “Can’t you take a hint?” I said over my shoulder.

  “First you lock me out on the back step of the Sunset, then you don’t return my calls and now you’re downright rude.” He grabbed me by the arm, bringing me to an abrupt halt. “What are you trying to keep from me?”

  The answer was a whole boatload of crap, but I didn’t think I’d share any of that just yet. I shook off his hand. “Did you come to arrest me? If not, take off.”

  “You and I have to talk. We can talk here or we can go to the station.”

  “I have to take a shower.”

  “And not a moment too soon, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  Over his shoulder, I saw Tully opening the truck door. I waved at him and headed for the front door. Styles followed me into the building.