Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "No," she said, then paused, thinking it over. "Yes."

  We found the road leading up to the main entrance and began walking uphill.

  "Isn't the gate locked shut after dark?" Barbara said.

  "There's more than one way to skin a cat," I said—upon which, a psychically-inclined black cat crossed our path. "Shit."

  "But you aren't superstitious," my sister reminded me.

  We turned off the access road and clawed our way up the steep hill leading to Cherry Street. It didn't take us long to find one of the semi-permanent gaps under the fence, and within minutes we were knocking on Flint's door. His greeting was less than enthusiastic.

  "It's wrestling night," he complained, nodding at the black and white television that he had pulled out of the dump.

  We poured out the contents of the cash box—or what was left after Barbara had removed the money—onto the kitchen table, a jumble of legal documents, photographs and handwritten notes. Flint spent his focus on the pictures of the two Jeremys, repeating several times his assertion that they were doctored.

  "You can't believe what you see, anymore," he sighed, turning a baleful eye on me as though I was the forgery in question.

  Dear Reader, insert asterisk here.

  "Where's your mother?" Barbara asked.

  "I put her in her cage and covered it with a blanket," he said.

  Meaning she didn't peep once the lights were out, or so I hoped. I lifted the powder blue bundle out of the pile and untied the string. Unfolding it, I found several typed pages.

  "I think it's a will," I said.

  "Is it full of 'bequeaths' and 'bestowed'?" Flint asked.

  My eyes drifted over the legalese on the first page. "Here's a 'bequeath'."

  "Then it's a will." Flint hesitated as he reconsidered and reconfirmed. "Well it don't look like a Bible."

  "I don't see any 'begats'," I confirmed.

  "A will from Dad?" Barbara said. Not 'Skunk'. The prospect of inheriting property made her respectful. I was surprised she didn't say 'from our dear father?'

  "Some other rat's ass," Flint negated, squinting at the 12-point font.

  I lifted my eyes to the top of the document. The old man was right. This will was composed for a complete stranger, for the benefit of complete strangers.

  Last Will & Testament of Benjamin F. Neerson

  I, Benjamin F. Neerson, of 20011 Ferncrest Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, declare that this is my Last Will and Testament.

  Article 1 - Preliminary Declarations

  I am married to Elizabeth J. Neerson and all references in this Will to my spouse refer to Elizabeth J. Neerson.

  I have living children. All references in this Will to my "child" or "children" or "issue" include existing children and any child or children hereafter born to or adopted by me.

  Like I said, complete strangers. I kept reading because that's what you do when you come across someone's personal Pentagon Papers. And it was a clue, for chrissakes.

  Article 2 - Specific Bequests and Devises

  I give my entire interest in the real property which was my residence at the time of my death, together with any insurance on such real property, but subject to any encumbrances on the said real property, to my spouse, Elizabeth J. Neerson. If said devisee fails or devisees fail to survive me, then this gift shall lapse and become part of the residue of my estate.

  I give my entire interest in any personal automobile(s), household goods, furnishings, tools, jewelry, clothing, and tangible articles of a personal nature....

  My eyes wavered. Boilerplate legalese gives me brain cramps, as I learned when I identified Skunk's corpse. As soon as I had signed off on a slew of forms, including a consent for Skunk's autopsy, I had been required to stand by while the morgue attendants fixed ID tags to his toe and the sheet that covered him. I thought I saw his big toe twitch, as though Skunk was summoning me for one last trim. You could have stood me before a firing squad and I couldn't have told you what was on those forms. After reading five or six sentences, I went into a spin. What was I signing? I almost didn't care. I checked every box under the list of infectious diseases the old hold-up artist might have been harboring, up to and including leprosy. I patted myself on the back, as though I had performed a public duty. Better safe than sorry. But what was this about an autopsy? What was the point?

  The coroner had said:

  "An autopsy is required in any violent death, including starvation, strangulation, suffocation, burning, stabbing, drowning, gunshot. We don't actually need your permission, seeing as the cause of death is apparent."

  "If it's apparent, why the autopsy?"

  The ME had not expected polemics from an allegedly grieving son. She swelled up like a toad and declaimed: "It's the law."

  Society's inability to put its collective finger on the obvious without generating a heap of fetid paperwork left me in a slump. Some guy gets toasted, but the ME wouldn't say how he died until they had put the body on the table and spread the butter and jam. The will was only marginally more reasonable, seeing as you had to dispose of the property some way if you wanted to prevent the logicians of the state from hauling it away in their pockets.

  Barbara was looking from the will to Flint, then back to the will, squinting so hard at the words her mascara practically dripped. I caught her eye.

  "Don't you see?" she whispered.

  I couldn't believe she was actually reading the document. It was sort of like watching a neighborhood cat sing an aria from Aida. I leaned down, following her crimson fingernail to Article 6: Testamentary Trust for Minor Child(ren).

  If any beneficiary under this Will is under the age of 18 at the time of my death, and if in the Executor's reasonable opinion holding any assets gifted to such beneficiary in trust will be of benefit to the minor and of the estate, I give said Executor full and absolute authority and discretion to direct that any, part of or all of said assets bequeathed, transferred or gifted to such minor beneficiary be held in trust until such beneficiary reaches the age of 18. In the event the Executor elects that such assets are to be held in trust for benefit of such beneficiary, I hereby nominate my spouse, Elizabeth J. Neerson, to serve as the trustee of such Testamentary Trust. If this person for any reason is unable or unwilling to serve as trustee, then I nominate Anthony Flint Dementis to serve as the trustee of such Testamentary Trust....

  "We have several $50,000 questions here," Flint nodded. "You've got someone else's will mixed in with pictures of Jeremy..."

  Flint's interest in the will and its provisions appeared to have waned after the first sentence of the first declaration. He had pulled away from Barbara and me and was running his thumbs over one of the pictures of the Jeremy twins, as though trying to remove a blotch from a painting. Meanwhile, my hair played a rift on my nape. Our mystery benefactor had drawn a solid link between Skunk and Flint. Flint...who might have been able to supply some of the personal details in the letters we had received, and which had sucked us into this godawful game. I felt sympathy for the curiously unnamed and unnumbered Neerson children. Who in their right mind would have made this doddering skinflake a trustee over his own dead bladder, let alone a major estate?

  "Either of you ever hear of Ferncrest?" I said.

  "Past the University of Richmond," said Flint with blunt authority. "Somewhere off River Road."

  Barbara and I stared at him suspiciously.

  "How do you know that?" I asked.

  "River Road isn't for squatters," Flint continued. "Last time I was there it was all mansions."

  "When was the last time you were there?" Barbara asked in a tone gritty with disbelief. She couldn't imagine him wandering out the door in a fit of senility, let alone covering the ten miles to the riverside enclaves.

  "Used to date a girl out there," he answered.

  "I'm sure things have changed since Richmond burned," I commented grouchily.

  Flint accepted this with polite misperception. "I guess anything looks
like a mansion after Oregon Hill."

  "I guess so," said Barbara. She was beginning to fidget. Were the helicopters bearing down on her? The last time Flint had allowed Barbara to use his bathroom he'd been forced to evacuate his house with his mother.

  "Flint, what is it you're not telling us?" If he had not been so old and pin-legged I would probably not had dared ask that question. Frail senior citizens and children (so long as they aren't accompanied by their care-givers) are the two demographic groups around whom I can throw my weight with impunity. I'm lucky Skunk hadn't nicknamed me 'Chickshit' instead of 'Mute'. It's a sad fact that in this world most moral suasion comes down to brute force. In spite of his gruff demeanor I felt at ease around wiry old Flint. Life had failed him, his body was failing him, and his mind did not seem all that sharp. A member of the Pushover Club, the only organization that would ever welcome me with a free lifetime membership.

  The problem being that, when he gave me a glance of vague incomprehension, I couldn't tell if it was real or an act.

  "You're the one standing with Skunk in the picture," I persisted. I had already told him about the photograph that had triggered our little outing to Belle Isle. "You and Skunk look younger. You're standing in front of the power plant."

  "I'd like to see it," Flint answered reasonably.

  "I left it back at the house. What were you doing together? Who took the picture?"

  "We used to go fishing up the James," Flint said doubtfully. "But we avoided the island 'cause it was too public. Neither one of us ever got a license."

  That made sense. Skunk would have jumped off the bridge before voluntarily paying the state's fee to partake in Nature's bounty. The government that regularly incarcerated him didn't deserve a break. I scrutinized the Jeremy pictures more closely. An ad currently running on TV showed a disapproving mother doctoring her family photo into something more congenial than the dour children of reality. The software company proudly announced the final result to be indistinguishable from the original.

  My eyesight was getting worse by the moment—I couldn't believe anything I was seeing. Or hearing, come to think on it. It's one thing to accept the relativity platitudes we harp on these days, quite another when it comes to your family. I'm not talking about the usual alternate lifestyles, but fundamental disintegration of the family tree. Hell, the family limb. Relativism is calorie-free comfort food. Flint's assertion that I was the victim of a digital joker was a little more filling.

  That Flint and Skunk used to go fishing together wasn't inconceivable. Old Oregon Hill residents had been pretty sociable. If they weren't beating each other over the head or committing armed robbery, they were just as likely to be rutting or interacting in reasonably civilized ways. That most of us had the attention span of a snail nixed any long-term projects that would have improved our minds or benefited civilization. An old-fashioned barn-raising would have resulted in a tumbledown shed littered by the comatose bodies of the drunken construction crew. As a kid I had been on the reclusive side, but had still taken my place in the wolfpack of kids when there was an abandoned house to be vandalized or basketball game to disrupt. We had enjoyed hanging out on street corners and giving VCU students a collective evil eye, and I had helped hound more than one pedestrian of the wrong complexion out of the neighborhood.

  Flint was denying that he and Skunk had ever gone fishing on Belle Isle. But lying was in our blood. Any of us would have denied ever eating Kissmecanoe Ice Cream, just to be contrary.

  "He's watching..." Barbara said with spooky emphasis.

  "Skunk?" I said angrily. "Can't you be a little more helpful than that? He's dead as sure as I'm standing here."

  "I didn't say he was alive, just that he's watching."

  Was that anything worse than being pursued by surveillance cameras? The ghost was in the details. If our forefathers aren't looking over our shoulders, the workers at the spook palace are watching our every transaction.

  "Well, I'm watching you, too," I carped.

  "Yeah..." Barbara gave me a long, doubtful look. "Pervert."

  The idea of humping my sister was enough to trigger serious gastric disturbances, and I'm sure the feeling was mutual. Barbara was just getting back at me for showing her up as an idiot. Perfectly understandable, until she continued:

  "I saw you watching me at the PFZ." She gave me a hooded glance and I could tell she thought she was telling the truth. "I wasn't serving drinks—I was dancing. You were in the audience, slobbering like all the other..." She stopped, as though realizing she was putting down herself when she put down her clientele.

  "I think you mean 'slavering', and you're wrong about me, too. Give me a break."

  "I saw you," she insisted. "You, and not that other—" She cut herself off.

  "What other?"

  "No one important, " she said.

  "Sweet Tooth, I can't even afford the cover charge for a dump like that," I said. I caught Flint giving me a wry look. "Hey, maybe it's you she saw."

  "We all look like shit or shinola," he said, turning to Barbara. "Did he have his sausage out? Was he squeezing his tube?"

  My sister eyed him warily, as though warning him to keep his sausage under wrap. She took the precaution of covering the ear nearest to him.

  "You saw someone who looked like me," I said. "Maybe you wished."

  Whatever gentility remained in our old Southron blood (and it was precious little) threatened to boil off in a moment. We all seemed to sense this and reduced the heat to a simmer. I couldn't believe Barbara would make such a claim about me, and was reluctant to leave Flint with the notion that I stalked my own sister.

  "You planning to go out to River Road and check that address?" Flint said.

  "I'm thinking of it."

  "Going to knock on the front door?"

  I was thinking that I might sneak around the yard, check the mailbox, go through the garbage. I shrugged.

  "You driving?"

  I had thought of that, too. If my house was being watched, Barbara and I would be spotted going to our cars. Before I could elucidate my intention of driving my car to a remote spot and searching it for any transponders, Barbara raised her hand.

  "Can I use your little girls room?"

  Flint eyed her warily. "What for?"

  Barbara pared down three fingers, leaving the number 2.

  "I only got one life to live, and not much left of that," Flint said, thumbing her towards the front door. "The little lady with the big dump can gas her brother's house."

  "But—"

  "You can hold it in for two blocks," the old man asserted. "If you can't, use one of the empty lots."

  We needed Flint's good will, which was obviously in short supply. I began to pry my house key off the ring.

  "I found my copy," Barbara said sulkily, patting her tote bag. She must have discovered it while excavating a hole for the money. She looked uncertain. "We don't know who might be there."

  "Give 'em a whiff and your worries will be over," Flint said, bending over and tapping his ass.

  "The older the shit, the worse it smells," Barbara said tartly.

  "The only thing that comes out here is Chanel No. 5," Flint beamed wickedly, straightening his skinny frame and giving her a silent hoot.

  This elevated conversation came to an end when Barbara grimaced and slapped her hand to her forehead. "You're really not going to let you use your precious bathroom with the chipped tiles and moldy bathtub and rusty toilet?"

  "It's not much, but it's dear to my heart."

  Barbara hastened out the front door. I felt a touch of remorse for not accompanying her. We might very well be throwing her to the lions, or dogs. And if Dog got her, we would never again see the $20,000 that we had found on the island. But I was reluctant to leave Flint's side. He had a smirk up his sleeve that annoyed the hell out of me.

  "You want to tell me what you know, now?" I said.

  He lined up his wrinkles in a show of prunish surprise. "You thin
k I'll have more to say with your sister gone?"

  "No. Yes."

  "I would have to make something up, then," Flint said. "I know a lot more than you do, but not about this." Pulling back from the box, and from me, he yawned broadly. "Past midnight, and long past my bedtime."

  I shouldn't have been startled. Time for me has always been elastic. The hardest thing about holding a job was enforced obedience to the clock. Nine AM was a cliff that I fell off more often than not. My boss was my safety net, seeing me as a feckless bundle of apathy who posed no threat to his own lack of ambition.

  "You thinking of going out to River Road this time of night?" Flint asked. "You start walking around there now, you'll trigger every home alarm and pucker every asshole in the Neighborhood Watch. They have very sensitive anal hairs in that part of town."

  "I don't guess you'd drive us out there," I ventured.

  "Got my license yanked years ago. I think the DMV figured I was ready to plow through the crowd waiting outside the DMV." He wiped his weary eyes. "Looks like you'll have to go back home, after all. If the goons aren't there, you'll have to deal with your sister's fecal syndrome. I don't envy you."

  Put that way, neither did I. After collecting the photos and papers into the cash box, I said, "Can you find a safe place to hide this for us? Not in your old ammo chest, but somewhere no one knows about?"

  "There's the toilet tank..." he speculated out loud.

  "Somewhere dry?" I added.

  Suddenly and horribly aware of my anal hairs clawing their way to my sphincter, I departed Flint's house with his cheerful benediction: "Don't go getting your throats cut."

  I wished I hadn't seen Don't Look Now. I wished I hadn't loafed half my life away watching video mayhem and relishing the gruesome extinction of actors paid by the ounce of fake blood that they surrendered to the camera. I'll never again pop slasher films into my VHS or incorporate murderous thoughts in my daydreams or fine-tune mortality on my agenda.

  Unfortunately, implementing these healthy injunctions would have to wait until Skunk's legacy was settled. It was sort of like going to Europe. You might look forward to walking the streets of Paris, but you have to fly there first—no trivial feat for an aviophobe. Not only that, but the whole time you're staring at the tomb of Napoleon, you're thinking: "I have to fly back."