Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

  Knowing neither their addresses nor phone numbers, I had no way of contacting my brother or sister. If they received letters about the mystery website, they would have to come to me, the one who had not budged from the family hearth, whose address remained unchanged.

  I gave a nod of congratulations to the ghost of our father. He had known where to find them. Jeremy, at least. On the same day I got the letter, Jeremy rang me up to let me know he had gotten one, too.

  "Weird, huh?" he said.

  There ensued a long pause. Jeremy must have found it awkward, because he broke the silence with the old family fable—as if bringing up an embarrassing memory was the height of fraternal interaction. He had not even been living with us when the alleged turd outrage took place. Which made it all the more galling. Either Barbara or my parents had told him, which meant the story was making the rounds. My eternal shame.

  I knew that if I didn't answer he would begin spouting more nonsense. He had earned his family nickname honestly. Oddly enough, he only took offense at it when steeped in the wisdom of his cups.

  "Listen, Doubletalk, I doubt there's anything to it. It's just a sick joke."

  "I don't think so, Mute. No one would play that kind of trick with Skunk. When I was in the can, no one played drop the soap with me. They knew who our father was."

  "Our?" I said, my hackles rising. "You talked to your jailbird buddies about me?"

  "No, no," Jeremy said quickly. "I meant to say they knew who my father was. No one would mess around with his name, even after he's been shot full of holes."

  "One hole," I amended absently. Whenever I felt semi-suicidal, I would correct my brother's exaggerations.

  Truth be told, I had been as surprised as Jeremy when he landed in a state prison for a crime that should have been worth no more than a night in the city jail. He had been out drinking with his friend Jerry Lewis—a comedian, but not the comedian. When Jerry was rousted by a pair of cops for creating a public nuisance (he pissed on the tire of a parked car which turned out to be a police cruiser—I told he was a comedian), Jeremy came to his aid by nudging one of the officers on the shoulder. Jeremy swore it was no more than that, but the cop went sprawling. The cop chose to put on his high hat, like God taking umbrage, and crucified him royally before the judge. Jeremy's mouth did the rest.

  Of all of us, Jeremy was most like Dad. He could turn sinister and (I suspected) deadly when he was crossed. But there the similarity ended, because our father had never been much for speech. Jeremy had a nervous streak that ran from his forebrain to his tongue, where he rattled off words as detrimental to himself as they were meaningless to everyone else.

  I was six years old when Jeremy was suddenly thrust in our midst. I arrived home from elementary school to find the living room couch cleared of junk to make room for three people. In the middle was Mom. To one side of her was five-year-old Barbara, wide-eyed and non-comprehending. On the other was a stranger.

  "Mute-baby," Mom announced, "this is your new brother."

  Living where we did, with whom we did, and in our rough, pre-student-infested neighborhood, Barbara and I already had a good grasp on the procreative process. Although there were the usual gaps and caveats for kids our age, we both knew there was a major league problem with this picture. What had happened to the nine months of Mom growing from bean pod to melon? What about the diaper phase and the crying-jag phase and the (not to put too fine a point on it) poop in the tub phase? Two or three years older than me, Jeremy was some kind of weird, alien mommy-snatcher who had burrowed a permanent hole in the couch.

  My childhood took a drastic downturn at that point. If I was Mute before, I became practically catatonic with this new arrival. Mom, too, seemed dragged down by Jeremy's presence, even though she wasn't poked and teased by him, the way I was. I never thought there was an abundance of motherly affection in her nature until I saw the contrast between the way she treated us and the newcomer. Compared to Jeremy, Barbara and I were beloved darlings. We got smacked around, true enough, but she never laid a finger on Jeremy. I sensed that had more to do with her fear of Skunk—who, on that first day, after dropping off Jeremy, had escaped to Triggs, the nearest bar.

  I can give you the flavor of our relationship with a succinct example:

  Before the influx of students, Oregon Hill was the last white neighborhood in downtown Richmond. I wouldn't say it was a Caucasian oasis—more like a swamp. These weren't your premiere bluebloods who sneered at their inferiors and supported the opera. Well, they sneered, but it was more of a generalized attitude towards the world. There were few black faces to be seen in our little world, one of them belonging to the newspaper boy. He was a big kid who looked like he could handle himself.

  About a week after Jeremy's arrival, I was sitting with him on the front porch when the delivery boy sauntered past, his newspaper pouch draped over his shoulder. Jeremy nodded in his direction and said, "Go over and call that guy a nigger."

  There didn't seem any point in doing this, but there was no apparent danger that I could see. So I went over and did it.

  Afterwards, Mom and Dad had a brief debate as to whether I should be taken to the hospital. They concluded I would survive, and left me to nurse my own wounds.

  "Why are you calling?" I asked Jeremy, trying and failing to wipe away bad memories as my ear sweated against the phone receiver. I was tense. I hate questions because I hate answers.

  "Oh, yeah," Jeremy said. "You must think I'm calling out of the blue."

  That's not what I thought, but I didn't say so.

  "Hello, you still there?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Okay, well...I got this letter yesterday..."

  "Yes."

  "You got one too?"

  In the past, Jeremy had been in the habit of using the most mundane personal information against me, whether to his profit or (which I suppose was emotionally profitable) simply to torment me. After getting me to tell him which toy I liked most, he held it ransom until I forked over my lunch money. When I was stupid enough to admit to a crush in my freshman year, he went and told the girl I abused my pillow at night while moaning her name. My brother should have worn the Mark of Cain the way cats have bells on their collars, to warn unwary prey. But this was one tidbit that could not be avoided.

  "Yes," I answered, after a pause.

  "You got a secret code?"

  "You mean part of a password? Yes."

  "What is it?" Then, realizing this was a bit too unsubtle even for him, added: "I'm your brother."

  Meaning: 'Trust me.'

  I couldn't help laughing.

  "Have you heard from Sweet Tooth?" he continued, not sounding too put out by my reaction.

  "No," I said. "And I don't have Barb's number. Do you?"

  "I haven't heard from her since her last abortion," Jeremy said blandly.

  He had often delivered his bombshells off-handedly—as though he was handing you a glass of homogenized milk, then waiting for you to swallow the jalapeno hidden inside. But he was never one to worry about adverse reactions. If you warned him about it, he would answer, "Or what?"

  In fact, that 'or what' pretty much defined Jeremy. He challenged society in various stupid ways, then cocked his snoot. Every so often society struck back.

  Oh yeah, he was Skunk's boy, however odd his arrival. And as we grew older, I noticed the physical similarity. The sandy hair, square jaw, big fists, mean glint.

  There was no telling if what he said about Barbara was true or not. But I couldn't imagine her confiding secrets to my brother. She knew him as well as I did, how he could make the simplest words into knives.

  I didn't respond, not wanting to reveal my ignorance if it was true, or my gullibility if it wasn't.

  "She married some dude from the power company, right?" said Jeremy.

  If he didn't know she was married, chances were the abortion business was made up. But confronting him with this logic would only prolong the conversation.


  "You still there?"

  "Yes," I said. Then, to move things along, added, "Whoever sent my letter made it sound like it was from Dad."

  "Mine too." Jeremy made a sound that could have been a sniff of emotion, or a snort of disgust. "He said some things...I would've busted him in the face."

  "Something only you could know?" I prodded.

  "Yeah. Tell you the truth, Mute, it sent an ice pick up my spine."

  A curious analogy. I wondered how many ice picks he had wielded, and against whom.

  "But it's not possible. I saw his body myself. I saw the clip of him being shot on YouTube."

  "You have a computer?" Jeremy asked quickly.

  "I went to the library," I explained.

  "I've never stepped inside a library in all my life."

  A point of pride, to be sure.

  "They have computers you can use," I told him. "That's where I saw Dad—"

  "You know how to use a computer?"

  "Not really. The librarian helped me. How about you?"

  From the way he guffawed, I thought he was about to make another proud subtraction from his resume. I was surprised by his next words.

  "I took a vocational class at Powhatan. Business Ed. I had to use a computer."

  "And?"

  "We weren't allowed to go on the internet. Assholes wouldn't even let us burn CDs." To further emphasize what a deprivation this was, he repeated, "Assholes."

  "So you don't—"

  "Maybe I can get my hands on a computer," he interrupted. "How hard can it be? Click a few buttons..."

  There was a cagy twist in his tone. I thought he was planning to rip off a computer from Best Buy, and considered warning him against doing anything stupid. Our letters made it clear we each possessed only a third of the key necessary for revealing what I assumed was a treasure map. Jeremy in jail would end whatever chance we had of recovering the Brinks stash.

  "It looks like we can't get anywhere without Sweet Tooth," Jeremy continued. "Maybe I should get off the phone, in case she's trying to call."

  "Are you coming over?" I asked.

  "Let's see what she's got, first. You've got my number."

  He hung up before I could contradict him.

  CHAPTER 4

  Barbara was Mom, only more cheerful. Men were as much objects to her as she was to them. She had not yet encountered a man devoted to destroying her life.

  In short, another Skunk.

  Not that Skunk ever beaten our mother, but a look from him could be like nine rounds with Tyson. And there are a zillion other tried and tested ways to wear out a human soul. Besides, it wasn't really as if he had dedicated his whole being to squashing Mom. It was more like transference of negative energy.

  Was he unfaithful? Kids are usually as ignorant as moms when their father flies the flag in foreign ports. Beyond carousing with his drinking buddies and the occasional robbery, I had little knowledge of Skunk's extracurricular activities. But Barbara and I couldn't help but wonder how our pleasant little twosome became so unexpectedly a threesome. No adoption agency ever sent a representative to check up on Jeremy's well-being. No social worker sniffed at our home-atmosphere, so inappropriate to the raising of well-rounded, law-abiding citizens. No, Jeremy wasn't kosher. Or maybe he was 100% kosher. One-hundred per cent under-the-counter McPherson.

  No one bothered to fill in the details, or even provide an outline. As the years passed and the mystery kid became a mystery man, we would sometimes catch sly looks from Jeremy, as though his ultimate joke was right up his sleeve. Like Dad, he was a pip at keeping secrets.

  In Barbara's case, there was a fairly secure chain of evidence. I was too young to remember her birth. Come to think of it, I don't recall my own. It's the one trauma we all share. The biggest day in our lives, and our eyes are squeezed shut. Our talent for ignoring evidence is ingrained, like we know from the beginning things are not going to turn out for the best. I couldn't remember a day when Barbara wasn't part of my life. And if this wasn't proof enough of her McPherson-hood, the fact that she was a ringer for Mom cinched the case. Since Mom would never have had the moxie to step out on the fearsome Skunk, the genome map was fairly clear, until it dropped off the cliff of my brother.

  But if physical appearance, a sultry voice and a pronounced sashay established Barbara's genetic credentials, her personality suggested an alien implant. She was the liveliest of all of us. If you include impulsiveness as a civic virtue, she was also the most dangerous. Whenever she saw injustice, she was inclined to say things like, "Let's call the police!"—the last people Dad wanted to see around his house. Which probably explains why Jeremy and I gravitated to her presence whenever Skunk was on a rampage. He couldn't trust his own daughter not to turn him in.

  To say this was alien behavior on her part is not much of a stretch. Our neighborhood had a long tradition of treating the police like an occupying garrison. There was plenty of fault on both sides, with overreaction the standard baseline from which everything escalated. Barbara risked her neck several times when she called the cops down on wife-beaters. Both Jeremy and I told her she should mind her business—it made Jeremy look bad with his friends, and it inclined neighborhood boys (usually Jeremy's friends) to add spice to the usual beatings they doled out to me.

  That's something else you know about me, now—if you haven't guessed already. I was at the bottom of the pecking order. Beat me. Unlike Jeremy, being Skunk's offspring offered no protection. This was because you had to show some spunk of your own before he took a mind to step in. Spunk was something I sorely lacked. Dad looked at me like some awful outgrowth. Even in my case, I doubt he suspected Mom of infidelity; but if he did, he must have thought she had been consorting with hamsters.

  Both Jeremy and I sensed Barbara was doing the right thing. We only had to see the battered faces (and you had to live among the lowlifes of the Hill to see a woman beaten within an inch of her life, with no one lifting a finger to help) to get the squeamish sensation that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we also saw it as the normal course of things...whereas Barbara demanded change.

  Not too much change, though. A child of her environment, Sweet Tooth saw no sense in self-control when it came to the lesser sins. The boy who lapped up her virginity at 12 also taught her how to smoke cigarettes, which she took to with gusto. Of course, I smoke too. We all do. It's part of the air we breathe. Oregon Hill was a great smokestack of tobacco-inhaling, chaw-chomping nicotine addicts. It still is, the current student population being as hooked on the weed (and even more drunk) than the original Hillers. The only difference is that we were ignorant addicts, while the students...I guess they're rebelling against the establishment. Sounds better...means less.

  Once or twice Jeremy felt compelled to defend our sister. Not her honor, of course, which was a lost cause. I'm talking about her life. When Bernie Matthews unhinged the jaw of his common-law wife with a left hook, Barbara not only reported it, she escorted the cops to his front door. It was an inconceivably dumb act, and the McPherson clan concluded that she was even more retarded than the rest of us. It was as if she had been stricken by a baleful disease that stripped her of common sense—and accountability.

  A day later, Jeremy found out Bernie's two boys were planning to waylay our sister and teach her a lesson in anti-civic duty.

  "Cal told me," Jeremy said. "It wouldn't look good, us not stopping them. He's willing to help me."

  "Help you what?" I asked.

  "With some counter-insurgency work," was Jeremy's response, exposing the fact that he often hung out with Dad's weird pal, old Flint Dementis, who had suffered a minor setback at Hue when a bullet entered one side of his head and exited with part of his forebrain.

  Jeremy was playing a delicate balancing act with his reputation. Defending Barbara meant he was standing for law and order, a horrible notion. But if he left the Matthews boys free to do their worst he could be accused of letting down his family. There wasn't
much in the way of family loyalty among the McPhersons. We let each other down regularly. Skunk, for example, was once again in prison. Or maybe he was giving us a break.

  "They're a lot bigger than you," I reasoned. "And Cal's no great shakes."

  "I know that. You ready to go?"

  I had sort of seen this coming. Backing out would be totally chickenshit. I gulped and nodded. At least there would be three of us.

  What I hadn't foreseen was that, when we confronted the Matthews boys in the alley between Laurel and Pine, Jeremy and Cal would push me in front of them and shout:

  "Here, take him, instead."

  And they did.

  I survived. I wasn't important enough to kill. Besides, the Matthews boys knew Skunk would be out of jail soon and might take offense if they converted Barbara into sliced bacon, which had been their avowed intention. With them working me over, instead, everyone's honor was satisfied without fear of dire consequences. Well, at least I got out of school for a couple of weeks.

  I asked Barbara why she didn't call the police when I got slammed. She looked stupefied, as though the thought hadn't crossed her mind, and should not have crossed mine.

  "If all the Matthews men go to jail, who'll take care of Mattie?"

  One of those Matthews men had dislocated Mattie's jaw, but no matter. I dropped the subject. At school, my contusions earned me some respect among my peers and sympathy (something I had an unhealthy craving for in those days) among my teachers.

  Barbara's golden heart was laced with impurities, but these could be explained away. She was the one, after all, who complained to playmates that her father was a "convicted feline." But mental shortcomings aside, between nature and nurture it was universally marveled that she had any scruples at all.

  Several hours after Jeremy called, the phone rang again. My home was becoming a communications hub. I was accustomed to going months without hearing a dial tone.