Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

by Tom Franklin

  Chabot didn’t have an ATM; the nearest was eleven miles north, in Fulsom. Cell phones worked in Chabot sometimes and sometimes they didn’t. Because Gerald County, wet, was bordered on two sides by dry counties, the DUI tally was high. Fulsom was the county seat and, with its Wal-Mart, high cotton compared to Chabot’s little spate of stores. Chabot’s one barber had died, and his son had come and dismantled the building a piece at a time and carried it off in his pickup truck. Now its lot was vacant, an explosion of wildflowers and weeds, and if you wanted your hair cut, you went to Fulsom or did it yourself.

  Because of the gully, Chabot’s buildings all faced east, like a small audience or a last stand: out Town Hall’s front windows, across the road and beyond strings of railcars and tankers, the tall, rumbling city of the Rutherford Lumber Mill. It blocked the trees behind it and burned the sky with smoke, one giant metal shed after another, smokestacks with red bleeping lights, conveyor belts and freight elevators below, log trucks, loaders and skidders beeping backward or grinding over sawdust to untusk limber green logs soon to be cut to planks and treated or creosoted for poles. The mill boomedgnashed-screeched and threw its boards and sparks and dust and exhaled its fumes sixteen hours a day, six days a week. Two eight-hour shifts and a six-hour maintenance shift. Its offices were a two-story wooden structure a hundred yards past the mill, two dozen people there, accountants, salesmen, secretaries, administration. Some even got company trucks, big green Ford F-250s with four-wheel drive.

  Not Silas. He wasn’t a mill employee per se, so he got what Chabot could afford. His Jeep, purchased at auction, was over thirty years old. It had an emphysemic air conditioner and a leaky master cylinder, an addict to both Freon and brake fluid. Not to mention oil. Its odometer had stopped on 144,007. When he complained it was an old mail Jeep, Voncille said, “Count your blessings, 32. You lucky the steering wheel’s on the right, and by that I mean left, side.”

  Around one, French called to say he was at The Hub across the parking lot. Did Silas want anything?

  “Hell naw,” he said and the chief laughed and hung up.

  A few minutes later he came in the front door with a greasy brown bag and a Coke and took Mayor Mo’s desk and uncrinkled the sack and removed an oyster po’boy.

  “Where’s his highness?”

  Silas raised his chin. “Out buying land.”

  “Roy,” Voncille said, leaning around her cubicle, pictures of her kids push-pinned over nearly every inch of it. “I don’t see how you can eat from the same place every day.”

  “Hell,” he said, chewing, “ain’t got no choice. I done arrested somebody or other in ever goddamn joint in the county. Busboys, dishwashers, waitresses, fry cooks, owners, silent partners. Marla”-the cook at The Hub-”she’s got a get-out-of-jail-free pass up to and including premeditated murder, long as she keeps feeding me. I gotta eat.”

  “What about Linda?”

  Chewing. “Time she gets off work she don’t do nothing but sit in front of the TV watching reality.”

  When he finished his last bite he wadded the paper into a ball and threw it into the wastebasket by Silas’s desk. He slurped the rest of his Coke and got his Camels and shook one out.

  “Don’t you light that,” Voncille called.

  French lit it anyway, grinning at her sigh, the way she stapled harder.

  “FYI,” he told Silas. “Paid me a visit to Norman Bates other day.”

  Silas glanced over. “Who?”

  “From Psycho,” Voncille said. “He means Larry Ott.”

  French blew a ray of smoke. “Always do it with a missing person, especially a girl. You know. The usual suspects.”

  Silas frowned. “You think Larry had something to do with the Rutherford girl?”

  “‘Larry’?”

  Silas regretted saying it. “I was in school with him’s all. Knew him a little way back when.”

  “He didn’t play ball, did he?” Voncille asked.

  “Naw. Just read books.”

  “Horror books,” French said. “His house is full of em.”

  “Find any dismembered bodies?”

  “Nah. I’ll run by his shop a little later. See if I can spook him some more. Went this morning but he wasn’t open yet.”

  “What time?” Silas asked.

  He thought about it. “Twenty minutes ago.”

  “Shop wasn’t open?”

  The CI shook his head.

  Silas creaked back in his chair and folded his arms. “You ever know of him not being open during business hours?”

  “So what. He ain’t had a customer in I don’t know how long. Don’t matter if he’s in or not.”

  “Yeah, but that ain’t never stopped him from being there’s what I’m saying. Monday through Saturday, regular as clockwork. Don’t even take lunch usually.”

  “Guess who’s the detective now,” French said, reclining in the mayor’s chair. He stretched out his legs and adjusted his ankle holster with the opposite foot. “You ever see that other movie Alfred Hitchcock did, Voncille?”

  “Which one?”

  “The Birds?”

  “Long time ago.”

  “All them buzzards and crows this morning reminded me of it. Seen it at the drive-in, when we was younguns. After it was over my little brother says, ‘You know what? I wish that really would happen. With birds like that. Just going crazy. We could find us some football helmets and a bunch of guns and ammo and go on the road, just killing birds and saving people.’ ”

  Silas barely heard. He was thinking of how, not long after he’d returned to south Mississippi, Larry Ott had called and left him a message on his home phone.

  “Miss Voncille,” Silas said. “You went to Fulsom High, didn’t you? Did you know Larry Ott?”

  “Not really, hon,” she said. “Just of him. He was a few years behind me.”

  The CI winked at Silas. “You ever go out with him, Voncille?”

  “Just the once,” she said. “I was never heard from again.”

  French snorted. “We wish.”

  SILAS HAD BEEN driving north on Highway 11 for ten minutes before he realized he was heading toward Larry Ott’s garage. It was early afternoon, the rain gone at last, puddles steaming in the road, a spongy dog of some unidentifiable breed shaking water from its fur. He ought to be over on 7, watching for speeders, getting his quota for the week, make a little cash for the city kitty, but something was gnawing at him.

  Larry’s first phone call had been nearly two years ago. Silas didn’t use his landline much and had gone a couple of days without noticing the answering machine had been blinking.

  “Hello?” the voice said when he mashed the button. “Hello? I hope I got the right number. I’m looking for Silas Jones. If I got the wrong number I apologize.”

  He had stared at the phone. Nobody called him Silas anymore. Not since his mother died.

  “Silas?” the recording went on. “I don’t know if you’ll remember me, but this is Larry. Larry Ott? I’m sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to, um, talk. My number is 633-2046.” Silas made no move to copy it down as Larry cleared his throat. “I seen you was back,” he continued. “Thank you, Silas. Good night.”

  He’d never returned Larry’s call-if Larry had phoned him at Town Hall instead of home, he would’ve had to.

  But then, instead of taking the hint, Larry tried again. Eight-thirty, a Friday night, couple of weeks later, Silas had stopped in for a change of clothes, on his way to eat, a date with some girl. Before Angie. When the phone rang he picked up and said, “Yeah?”

  “Hello? Um, Silas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s Larry. Ott. I’m sorry if I’m bothering you.”

  “Yeah, I was just heading out.” The heat trickling from his chest. “What’s up?”

  Larry hesitated. “I just wanted to, you know, say welcome back. To the crooked letter.”

  “I g
otta go,” Silas said and hung up. He’d sat on the bed for half an hour, the back of his shirt stuck to his skin, remembering him and Larry when they were boys, what Silas had done, how he’d beaten Larry when Larry said what he said.

  Silas felt clammy now as he drove. Since leaving he’d known Larry was ostracized, but it wasn’t until he’d returned to lower Mississippi that he heard everything that had happened.

  He rolled the Jeep up behind a log truck and slowed, the rag stapled to the longest pole fluttering. Taillights were fine, tag good. He eased over in the opposite lane and mashed the accelerator and the Jeep backfired. Piece of shit.

  He tooted his horn as he passed the truck, leaving clouds of ugly black smoke, and the driver blew his air horn back.

  French was right that Ottomotive Repair hadn’t had a local customer-or any customer, really-since Larry’s father had died and Larry’d taken over. Silas could testify: in all the times he’d driven past on his way to Fulsom, he was yet to see anyone get their car fixed. Nobody but Larry there, that red Ford. Still, he showed up to work every day, waiting for somebody on his way to someplace else, somebody who didn’t know Larry’s reputation, to stop in for a tune-up or brake job, the bay door always raised and waiting, like something with its mouth open.

  Larry was taller now, thinner. Silas hadn’t seen him close but his face looked thin, his lips tight. Used to be, his mouth always hung open, giving the impression he was slow. But he wasn’t. He was smart. Knew the weirdest shit. Once told Silas a king cobra could grow to over sixteen feet long and raise eight or nine of those feet into the air. Imagine it, he’d said. Like a giant swaying scaled plant from another time looking down at you right before you died.

  Silas passed the Wal-Mart and then the arrowed sign to Fulsom’s business district. Soon the road bottlenecked down to a two-lane and the businesses became sparse, the sidewalks cracked, sprouting weeds, buildings posted, windows and doors boarded. He passed what used to be a post office. He passed a clothing store that had gone so long without customers it’d briefly become a vintage clothing store without changing stock. Building on his right was an ex-Radio Shack, windows busted or shot out and the roof fallen in so thoroughly the floor was shingled, the walls beginning to sag and buckle. The only businesses still open on this end were a cheap motel that catered to quickies and Mexican laborers and the garage he was approaching, OTTOMOTIVE REPAIR painted on the side in fading green letters.

  Larry’s pickup, as French had said, wasn’t in its usual spot, the bay door closed. Silas slowed. He signaled and turned into the garage lot and came to a stop by the gas pumps, as if he wanted to fill up. This the closest he’d been to the shop since…well, he’d never been this close. The two antique pumps hadn’t worked in years, though, and looked like a pair of robots on a date. In raised, white-painted numbers on metal tape readouts were the prices when they’d last been used:.32 regular and.41 ethyl.

  Silas switched the Jeep off, his eyes settling on the rectangle of dead grass by the shop where, except for a stint in the army, Larry had parked every day since he quit high school. The same truck. Driving the same miles to and from the same house. Same stop signs, stop lights. Nothing to show but dead grass.

  Inside the shop, he knew, there was a red toolbox, a pump handle jack, creepers against the wall, drop lights hanging from the ceiling. Occasionally as he drove past, Silas had seen Larry leaning on his push broom watching cars. Silas would front his eyes as if he had someplace important to go. Other days Larry would have rolled his toolbox out on its casters so he could watch traffic as he wiped his wrenches and sockets with a shop rag. Sometimes he’d wave.

  Nobody waved back. Nobody local anyway. But say you were from out of town, you were passing through with your brakes squealing, a bearing singing, a knock in the shocks, maybe. Say you’d been worried about breaking down when you saw the white cinder block shop, quaint, green-painted trim flaking off, the building itself the color of powder laundry detergent, maybe you’d slow down and pull in. You’d notice the gas pumps and smile (or frown) at the prices. You’d see no other customers and count yourself lucky, for by now Larry would be walking outside pulling a rag from his pocket, his name on his shirt. Short brown hair, cap pulled too low over his ears.

  Lucky you.

  But you wouldn’t know his reputation. That, in high school, a girl who lived up the road from Larry had gone to the drive-in movie with him and nobody had seen her again. It had been big news, locally. Her stepfather tried to have Larry arrested but no body was found and Larry never confessed.

  Silas looked at his watch then sat a moment longer. He had known Cindy Walker, too. The missing girl. In a way, Larry had introduced them.

  He glanced up the road.

  Where the hell was Larry? Probably sitting at home, reading Stephen King. Maybe he finally took a day off. Or gave up.

  But still the gnawing. What if some relation of the current missing girl, Tina Rutherford, dwelling on Larry’s reputation, had taken it upon himself to pay Larry a visit?

  Look at you, 32 Jones, he thought. You done ignored the poor fucker all this time and now all the sudden you care?

  “32?” The radio.

  “Yeah, Miss Voncille?”

  “You need to get over to Fourteenth and West. It’s a rattlesnake in somebody’s mailbox.”

  “Say what?”

  “Rattler,” she repeated. “Mailbox.”

  “Was the flag up?”

  “Ha-ha. Mail carrier reported it. It being, you know, in the box? That makes it a federal crime.”

  “How you know that?”

  “32,” she said. “You only been in that uniform two years. You know how long I been setting in this chair?”

  “So it’s happened before?”

  “You don’t even want to know. I’ll call Shannon.”

  He signed off, glad Voncille would contact the police reporter. Anytime he got his picture or name in the paper, it raised his profile, which might boost his salary at evaluation time. Enough good PR he could be a black Buford Pusser, maybe run at sheriff himself in ten years.

  He could head over to Larry’s house later, he thought, cranking the Jeep. But then he got a better idea and flipped his cell phone open.

  “32,” Angie said. “You ain’t got another decomposing corpse, do you?”

  “Hope not,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Not much, she reported. Wrapping up a one-car on 5, no injuries except the dead deer. Trooper had already split. Tab and the guy who’d hit the deer were field dressing it, planning to split the meat. “Tab say you want a tenderloin?”

  “Angie,” he said. “You know Larry Ott?”

  Her phone crackled. “Scary Larry?”

  “Yeah. Feel like following a hunch?”

  “May be, baby. Tell me more.”

  “I need yall to run out there when you got a minute. Little dirt road in Chabot, off Campground Cemetery Road.”

  “I know where he stays. How come?”

  “Just when you got a minute. See if the place looks clean. It ain’t far from where yall at now.”

  “Hang on,” she said.

  He pulled to the edge of the highway and waited for a log truck, the Jeep shaking as the truck thundered past with its logs bouncing.

  “Angie?”

  “All right,” she said. “But 32?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This means you going to church with me on Sunday.”

  “We’ll talk,” he said. “And save me that tenderloin.”

  HE COULD COVER his jurisdiction one end to the other, Dump Road to the catfish farm, in fifteen minutes if he stuck his light on and hauled ass, like today, and soon he’d neared Fourteenth Avenue. Silas thought of it as White Trash Ave., a hilly red clay road with eight or ten houses and trailers clustered along the left side and Rutherford land on the right, fenced off and posted every fifty yards, an attempt to keep the rednecks from shooting deer and turkeys in the woods. Wildlife was good for
the mill’s image. You rode through the pines braking for deer, sometimes fawns on clumsy legs, rare red foxes, bobcats, you almost forgot for a moment the trees were a crop.

  He patrolled through here once or twice a week, different times, keeping his eye on an Airstream trailer out behind one of the houses, half blocked from the road by a shed. The way the trailer’s windows were boarded up, its door padlocked, made him think it might be a crystal meth lab but, without probable cause-a neighbor complaining, an explosion-he couldn’t check it out.

  Every time he cruised past, the white residents frowned from chairs on their porches, thin tattooed bleach-blond women with babies on their laps, strained-looking grandmothers in housedresses smoking cigarettes, garbage in the yards, clotheslines with sheets lifting in the wind, sheer panties, nylons. In one yard was an old Chevy Vega, no hood, bitterweed growing through the engine block, windows broken, the trunk open-he’d seen a dog sitting in there once with its tongue out. Seen a goat on a rope, too, cast-off car parts speared by grass, fishing lures dripping from the power lines. An old camper shell used for a chicken coop and chickens and guinea hens running wild in the weeds. A duck in a kid’s wading pool. Kids revving four-wheelers in the deep grass. He didn’t know what it was about white folks and four-wheelers, but every damn house seemed to have one.

  And the dogs.

  Each place yielded half a dozen, rarely any known breed, mostly just Heinz 57s, a throng of unneutered, collarless barking mongrels waiting for his Jeep whenever he rounded the curve at the bottom of the hill, chasing him until the woods picked back up.

  Here they came now, the whole furious, joyful tide of them, parting as he rode through, barking alongside the Jeep, three or four big dark ones loping along with bass voices, a few mediums and several small yappers. He saw the postal Jeep up ahead, newer model than his, nice paint job, parked to the side of the road in the shade, its flashers on. He knew the driver, a woman named Olivia. They’d met in the Chabot Bus and gone out a couple times, but she had two young boys. Silas wasn’t much for kids and she wasn’t much for a man who didn’t swoon over her children. On one of their dates they’d discussed White Trash Ave., which he’d confessed to calling it, and she’d told him it was the bane of her route, she refused to get out and deliver any package to those white folks’ doors because of the dogs. Instead, she’d blow her horn, which she knew pissed them off, and if nobody came, she’d just put a notification in the box, saying come to the post office. And why didn’t he like children?