Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

  Boy, that was clever, especially considering the source. I suppose her threat was justified, since I had questioned her manhood.

  We walked past the remains of an old armory that had blown up way back before civilization, maybe before horses, maybe before the Dawn of Man. History is what happened outside my vision, before the Dawn of Mute, and all I see is the garbage left behind by a zillion generations—which, unfortunately, includes me and my paltry collection of genes. I heard somewhere that the armory blew up when a drunk, possibly one of my immediate ancestors, walked into the middle of the gunpowder-filled warehouse and lit up a stogie. It must have been a helluva blast, one of those catastrophes that make you regret all the great shows of history you'll never see. What remained was a gutted ruin swathed in vines, a mute marker to mankind's path to ultimate destruction.

  You can see I was in a good mood.

  Just before reaching the south fork of the river we turned uphill, onto the main trail, a loop that was popular with joggers and birdwatchers. The undergrowth rattled with critters as we approached the power station. So far as I knew, there weren't any large animals on the island, if you discounted larking college students. Raw human nature would have been titillating at any other time, but Barbara Buzzcock kept me glued to the program.

  In daylight, the old power station could be accessed from the south fork when the water was low. Countless toughnecks had clambered up the boulders, entering the bottom story in search of bare patches of concrete for their graffiti. But this was too chancy at night. Entering from the island side was not quite as difficult, and Barbara could stand on the path and shine the flashlight on the building while I fought my way through the vines and manmade barrier. I assumed I would have the honor of risking my neck, or else she could have come by herself.

  Nature wasn't the only party making it difficult to reach the old plant. A wide moat-like ditch ran the length of the island side. A few days of rain could turn it into a swamp, but usually it was a drybed littered with garbage that had spilled over the causeway, interspaced with a holiday set designer's intensity between trees and thick underbrush. An added drawback of the low approach was that you needed an extension ladder to reach the doors and windows overhead. The only reasonable methodology for anyone idiotic enough to come here at night was across the culvert that spanned the ditch at the lower end of the building. Having foreseen the mob of idiots addicted to abandoned power plants, the city had planted a thick-gauge wire fence on the culvert, including jagged wings to either side to stop intrepid souls from hanging onto the wire and swinging to the other side. The fence bore the scars of innumerable sieges and an almost-equal number of repairs. It was my job to find the shoddiest bit of patchwork and force my way through.

  I stepped off the path and halfheartedly walked up to the fence. Even if I managed to breach the fence, I would have to highwire my way along the culvert, a narrow path strewn with broken branches. I curled my fingers around the chain link and gave a shake.

  "That's it, can't get through," I said, squinting into Barbara's light.

  "That wasn't much of an effort." She shifted the light so I could clearly make out the nearest patch of graffiti, a clever monogram displaying all the language skill of an aardvark: 'BM SUCKS COCKS'. Barbara continued: "If it's so impossible, how did that get up there?"

  The lettering had a mildly antique patina, was perhaps a decade old. Oregon Hill had not been so saturated with students back then, so it was a good chance the author was part of the local bloodline. Whoever he was writing about was probably a local, too. I trolled through my childhood address book and came up with several possibilities: Bunny Mason, Betty Moore, Belinda Murphy. For any of the three to have been sucking cock, they must have started at a ridiculously early age, with a very short period between pacifiers and johns. Barbara, though, had been a couple of years older....

  Of course, it was just the sort of thing a guy would write if a girl refused to suck his cock. And I wouldn't have put it past Jeremy to slander our sister. It's not something he wouldn't have said to her face.

  Barbara seemed perfectly oblivious to the graffiti's possibilities. Anyway, sucking cock on Oregon Hill was so much a part of the indigenous culture as to be unworthy of comment. I suspect it's no different with today's collegiate crowd, except they get credit for oral surgery.

  In any event, my sister would require a more convincing effort before she would let me off the hook. I doubted she would ease off short of my falling and breaking my neck.

  "You want to steady that flashlight some?" I complained. The waffling light, plus my own shadow, made it difficult to get a clear look at the fence. Barbara was shaking from the night chill, but she was damned if she would admit she had come out here inadequately prepared in her tinselly outfit and stiletto heels. I picked out the more obvious patches in the chain link, where determined trespassers had plied wire cutters. The gaps had been welded shut, but some of the repairs looked weak. I tested an area just above the base of the culvert and after a minute managed to pull open a foot-wide gap that looked large enough for entry. Dismayed by my success, I drew back.

  "Now what?" Barbara said in exasperation, as though questioning my brotherly devotion. When I didn't answer right away, she pointed the light at the building's side door, propped wide open with all the invitatory glee of a giant carnivore.

  "This thing's kind of narrow," I said, nodding at the causeway.

  "Step on it."

  "There's a tree on it," I said.

  "Step over it."

  "And see those there?" I continued my complaint, pointing out some low-hanging branches.

  "Step through them."

  There was my sister's philosophy of life, with one glaring omission. Step on, step over, step through, but where was the step out? There was no court in the world that would convict me if I turned away from this idiotic scene and walked home. Barbara might claw my eyes out, but that was an optional sentence, not the death penalty.

  "Mute..." Barbara intoned. A single-syllable nickname was inadequate for seduction, so she drew the 'u' out like a string of taffy. "You don't want me to live like this all my life, do you?"

  I had never heard of money curing anyone of being a slut, a fact so apparent I didn't bother bringing it up. I was disturbed by her come-hither (or, in this case, go-hither) tone of voice. I half-expected her to offer up her cooch right then and there. Sad to say, in the old days inbreeding was a rather common habit among Oregon Hillers. Frowned down upon by the rest of society, the locals went local, real local, which only made us greater subjects of scorn. I hoped Mom wasn't Dad's sister, but I didn't have any proof either way. The McPhersons certainly behaved like a clan with suspect begatting, good Christians that we were. The preachers don't often 'fess up to Biblical hanky-panky, but genes and Genesis suggest incest on a massive scale.

  Barbara was on automatic, treating me the way she treated all stupid males, but her sultry tone gave me the creeps. She didn't realize she was only reinforcing my desire...to run away.

  Several voices came huffing and puffing up the path. Beams of light stabbed jaggedly in all directions. Whirling in alarm, Barbara focused her own beam on a passel of joggers wearing LED headlamps, looking for all the world like a derailing passenger train as they pumped their legs up the slope. They were on us in a moment, a herd dolled up in polyester and Velcro. I crouched next to the fence, terrified by the possibility that these were plainclothesmen who would whip out guns from their sagging waist pouches and spreadeagle us on the ground. If nothing else, they could stick us with trespassing after dark.

  The joggers weren't cops, but fellow scofflaws who were just as abashed as we were to be caught on the island post-sunset. The best defense for both parties was to pretend the other wasn't there. The joggers steamed past us, their huffing subdued. Once they were gone, Barbara let out a long breath.

  "Now will you get the lead out of your ass?" she said. The irate sister had kicked out the vamp. "I don't want to hav
e to sic Dog on you."

  A threat that, if carried out, would leave her as broke as she had begun. She was right, though. One way or the other, I had to make up my mind. An unfamiliar ache coursed through my mental subprocesses: curiosity. Whoever was playing mind games with us knew the McPherson tonic scale down to the last note. What the hell lay hidden in the power station? With Barbara goading me on, I was suddenly humming with a passion to know.

  The old Oregon Hillers had had a phrase for the poor craftsmanship used in repairing the chain link fence (and of which they were past masters), but I won't bother to repeat it here. I found it easy to slip through the gap. Once I was out on the culvert, though, I had second thoughts and began to turn back. A hiss from my sister turned me around again and I began creeping my way along the narrow pathway. It would have been a snap for a more limber and self-confident explorer. For me, it was a dance in the dark—and it might as well have been dark, what with Barbara dancing the light all over the place, squeezing shadows out of every lump and bump in my path, making it look like smudged carbon and giving me only the vaguest clue of what lay ahead.

  First up, the aforementioned tree that had sprawled itself in a menacing barricade across the culvert. There was no question of springing over, not for me. I sat on it and swung my leg over, the bark giving my crotch a vigorous scrubbing before I managed to hitch myself onto my feet on the other side. I immediately found myself in a thick network of vines and branches from the treetops growing out of the ditch to either side of the culvert. I thought of the malevolent trees in The Wizard of Oz, except in this case the only witch in the vicinity was my mental-case sister, who could cast spells without an ounce of magic. I pushed and tugged cautiously at the tangled mess, mistaking more than one thick vine for a snake and nearly falling off in alarm. But I knew from the open door ahead that others had made it through before me, and that, theoretically, this was not an impossible task.

  Teetering past the final limb, I came out on the building ledge and let out a sigh of relief. My shadow loomed on the wall, impressing me with its bulk, Charlie Atlas unchained. I leaned sideways to allow Barbara's light through the door, and immediately saw a sleeping bag lying like a dark shaggy dog on the floor. I leaned forward, trying to see if anyone was in it. Abandoned sleeping bags were fairly common along the river, the homeless being real slackers when it comes to toting their gear. When I entered, my body again blocked the light, so I nudged my foot ahead until I came on a soft resistance. I gave the sleeping bag a gentle kick and found no one inside. That was a break. It was also a warning that its owner might return for some ill-deserved shuteye.

  I hate being hurried, and everything tonight was a rush. Rushed sex, a rush to the island, now a rush to find the treasure before Carl and Dog showed up. Barbara seemed to think they would wait until daylight to search the station, but who was to say they weren't as dumb as we were? Encountering Dog in the dark was about as cozy a prospect as stepping on a land mine.

  I had not brought the flashlight with me out of fear of dropping it in the broad swampy ditch, where it would have been pretty much irretrievable. Barbara tried to follow my progress, shining the light through the gaping windows as I traversed the building, but it was a piss poor substitute for having light at hand. And once I circled to the other side of the building, I was stuck with whatever the Moon offered from the river side. It didn't help that the place was full of junk. I couldn't go three feet without stubbing my toes on old fragments of ductwork, lathing and various other bits of industrial strength garbage. From the smell of the place, there were personal leftovers as well, uneaten food and human waste under a layer of ejaculatory overspill. All my slipping and sliding suggested it was a thick layer, too, with tasty bits of prophylactic latex thickening the gumbo. I promised myself I would strangle our unknown guide if I ever got the chance to put my hands around his neck—and if he wasn't too imposing.

  In my book, self-annihilation is not the apex of manhood. Sing me no songs of virile angst or raincoat rebellion. I see no virtue in suicidal behavior just because my life is in a permanent slump. I know, that's only me, but at the moment I felt it was hazardous just breathing in the air of the old power plant, which reeked of asbestos in addition to the biological components. You don't miss much in life if life is your primary objective, and every slippery step I took reminded me I was risking the one thing that mattered most to me. It was sort of late to raise the white flag, but as I looked out one of the southward facing windows I reviewed the option of trying to scramble my way to the moonlit boulders in the river below. It was a damn sight trickier than the ditch crossing, but it opened the bright possibility of dodging my sister's wrath. On the other hand, she knew the way to my front door, and I wasn't ready to abandon my house.

  Where the hell could it be? What could it be? There were dark lumps on the floor that could be old duffel bags or boxes or even human remains. This was impossible. If I intended to pursue this, I would have to go back to the island and get the flashlight from Barbara.

  Someone coughed. Or swore. Or chuckled.

  I froze, my eyes drooling out of my gaping mouth. I imagined some homeless woolly mammoth rising up and spearing me with its tusk. I was beyond help, beyond hope, and almost beyond bladder control.

  "Hold on, hold on...so many goddamn buttons."

  I didn't recognize the voice, although the tinniness was familiar. It was emerging from a miniature loudspeaker. I wondered if I was again the target of a hidden camera and found myself dropping fear for annoyance. Our unknown manipulator was taking on godlike airs, demanding that we be good for goodness sake because you never knew when He might be watching. God doesn't back down, back off, or back a losing horse. He was a persistent cuss, with a my-way-or-the-highway tilt of His chin. The resemblance to our hidden Mr. Wiz was striking. But only a few more words from the speaker were needed to tell me this man was younger than the one in the abandoned house.

  "Just give me a moment here…I'll lend you a hand."

  "I don't want a hand," I said querulously to the darkness.

  "Maybe not, but you'll appreciate this..."

  Two lights came on. Momentarily blinded, I covered my eyes. "You work for the guy from the old house?" I asked.

  "He had to step out," said the new voice.

  I felt safe—if not from prying eyes, then at least from an immediate bullet between the eyes. The light came from a pair of lamps on a tripod that had been braced against the wall dividing what appeared to have been a workroom from an office. There was a palpable squish as I took a step forward. Looking down, I saw confirmed all the worst conjectures I had made in the dark. It was a regular vomitorium-plus. I hadn't spent much time up here as a kid, being more interested in sticking my head through the gaping turbine hubs downstairs. Even then, I was practicing for the guillotine. The top floor might have been just as bad as this all those years ago. The Ur-Oregon Hillers had had the habit of trashing anything that had been abandoned: homes, shops, empty hydroelectric plants. Hell, they also trashed the very houses they were living in, with marginally less anarchy. As a 10-year old, gunk had been a part of life, to be relished and even sought after. As an adult, I was a bit more finicky. Scraping a used rubber off my shoe was not so hilarious, anymore.

  I located the camera in a high niche behind the lights and gave it a double blast of skepticism. "Come on, who are you, really? Where did the other guy go? Step out where? And who is he?"

  "Only an old fart playing Mission Impossible," the voice said. "You know, money is like life, at its most vulnerable when it's between two points. You go to the store, you get creamed in an accident. You take bills out of your wallet and they're at risk. Even a wire transfer is vulnerable to hackers. We're dealing with pure liquid assets, hidden money, floating loose like a piñata. So why don't you take advantage of this wonderful light and begin looking around? I see several interesting prospects against the wall behind you."

  "You should know," I shot back. "Would it really
be so hard to drop this on my doorstep?"

  "Why your doorstep?" the voice responded with a trace of irritation. "You have a brother and sister."

  "Why should you care?" I said.

  "I want to be fair."

  "Then why did you leave the clue in my house?" I said. Our unknown benefactor might want to be fair, but not to the exclusion of mind games.

  "Does it matter?" said the voice. "And does it matter who I am? Use the light I'm giving you and search."

  He had a point. I was getting nowhere fast. I walked away a few steps, trying to avoid the worst of the floor-gunk. "Am I getting warm?"

  "How should I know?" said the voice.

  "Forget it," I said, leaning down and gingerly tipping over an old knapsack. A book slid out, a thumb- and weather-beaten paperback. 'The Succulent Secretary' was the title. It was one of those mid-Fifties productions, written at a time when words were as titillating as images. I pictured a wrinkly geezer jacking off at key phrases. The ultimate deconstruction.

  "Not here," I said, after lifting the edge of the knapsack to see if anything else was inside.

  "I see," said the voice. "If you find it..."

  "Yeah?"

  "Try not to get any smears on it."

  "Smears?" I said, then added, "Oh, yeah. What exactly is 'it', again?"

  The voice chose not to answer. I pushed ahead across the mushy floor, praying I didn't become pregnant from sheer funk. Impossible, sure, but there must be a saturation point where everyone and everything becomes a potential womb. Empty space produces humans, given enough time. We're proof of it.

  I ranged through 57 different varieties of disgusting rubble, from flaky bags to empty crates. There were even soggy envelopes, some so old they were addressed without Zip codes but with a kind of cerebral flair, as though the Post Office had been able deliver letters bearing no more than a smudge. Mailmen had once been telepathic, identifying locations with arcane logos. I wasn't nearly that talented, being unable to spot the prize under my eyes.