Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

"I'm not one for finger-pointing, especially when I'm being the one fingered."

  I thought Joe Dog had ranged out of earshot, but a loud snort from inside some rusty monkey bars said otherwise.

  "And I don't want to be the next duck in the shooting gallery," said Carl with sincere emphasis.

  He was referring to the sniper. I saw one of my assumptions drop out of the flock and fall dead from the sky. Joe Dog might be Carl’s dogbot, but it was starting to look as if he was not the one who had taken potshots at us. Jeremy or Barbara or both must have filled him in about what had happened on Route 6. Fear of my captors dipped somewhat, leaving me strangely deflated. That Carl and Joe Dog might not be as dangerous as I had originally thought removed some of the cachet of the occasion. Maybe we were freighting this whole business with more meaning than it deserved. Human ephemera trying to rise out of the mist...but that's a little too meaningful.

  "Who shot who?" Todd said, alarmed.

  "Just a warning shot," I answered, casually dismissing a moment that had nearly trashed my Dockers. "I thought they were trying to hurry us on, but now I wonder if we weren't somehow trespassing." Well, we had been on state property.

  "No clue who the shooter was?" Carl was uneasy, too.

  "It could be one of the Congreve brothers," I said. I explained their role in the story, then added: "But we've been spied on ever since Skunk last got out of jail. They're not the only ones looking for the Brinks money."

  "So we're looking at second and possible third and fourth and fifth parties," said Carl, his loose-skinned face drawing up in pique.

  "You're the third party," I reminded him.

  "I guess this brings up the reason for our conference," Carl continued. "Even if some of Skunk's stash ended up here, it's gone now. Look at this dump! Didn't anyone teach you to maintain your property? Property loses all its value if you don't polish it and kiss it and rub it down once and awhile. You have to love your property. You use it, but you treat it with respect, or enough respect to keep it from falling down."

  Was he thinking of his pole ballerinas? Not exactly traditional real estate, but they were his primary source of income, giving a casting-couch hue to his domain. I suppressed a mental image of his laving tongue applying Lemon Pledge to my sister's dusty shelves.

  "I love my house," Todd protested unconvincingly.

  "It looks lived in," Carl conceded. "But there aren't any gold bricks here."

  "You're joking, right?" Todd scowled.

  "But this has to be the Brinks money," I said, looking up at a broken gutter. "Or what's left of it."

  "Don't think where it should be, think where it is." Carl's eyes narrowed. "That letter you got from Skunk...Barbara...Jeremy...you..." He turned to Todd. "And you?"

  "I didn't get any letter from this Skunk guy," said Todd, fidgeting.

  "Look me in the eyes," said Carl.

  "I didn't get one!" Todd repeated, his eyes wandering.

  "Betcha did." Carl went all fat with smugness. "None of you've thought this through. If Todd got a letter, someone knows about him and his connection to Skunk and Brinks. Someone we can't guess. But they know this isn't Brinksland. It's just another dump, whoever lived here. The money went somewhere else."

  "Skunk could never afford this place," I pointed out. "Not unless the money came from the robbery."

  "That may be so. But you see, why would Todd get a letter at all, unless the money was somewhere else?"

  Good point.

  CHAPTER 22

  Carl and Joe Dog were giving a premier course in the raw nerve needed to survive beyond your means, which in America is the only way to live . If Todd's house had been properly groomed, with new coats of Sherwin Williams Deluxe outside and in, and a properly manicured yard, it might very well have been housejacked. Yes, it's crazy. After all, none of it was portable, and none of the crap inside was what anyone would pay good money for. Such a scam usually involves a semi-abandoned house, a forged power of attorney, a fake ID, and a bogus quit claim deed. With this documentation in hand, the thief sells the house and disappears with the proceeds. But Carl would have to invest way too much time, effort and money before he could put this shack on the market. I could only thank my foresight for keeping my own house in permanent disrepair.

  Before departing, Carl loaded us down with every sort of voodoo curse imaginable to a well-cultivated idiot. If we contacted the police, Joe Dog would do a lot more than just poop on our doorsteps. In fact, if we told anyone anything, our brains would dissolve, our dicks would fall off, and our shit would petrify in our bodies (all of which applied to my current physical state—I was feeling like a dickless wonder). Above all, they would hear and see all that we did, up to and including grunting on the toilet. Considering the amount of A/V I had been subjected to lately, I could only believe it to be true. Even if the surveillance wasn't 24/7, a small slip could turn an inconsequential moment into lifetime ruin. Just think of the upstanding pastor innocently browsing for a Betty Boop doll for his daughter, momentarily coming upon a girl stripping off her tight black dress, and being busted by the internet police for soliciting child pornography. Think of the technologically challenged politicians who post their abs on Facebook, accompanied by lewd text, never imagining the picture would be duplicated a zillion times in a blink of an eye, sending their careers down the tube reserved for dumb asses. I wondered if there were images of me circulating the globe, gawping stupidly in the old farmstead and the abandoned pump house.

  The torture began right away, when Carl and Joe Dog left me behind with Todd. My curiosity was aroused, but so was my antipathy. My new brother was obviously a cretin. I saw him as a caricature of myself, a garbled echo that shared my discomfort—naturally. I went around to the alley to get my car and found it had been towed, courtesy of the Ferncrest Masters of Anality. It went back to the house and banged on the door.

  "I guess you could give me a ride home," I said when Todd opened up.

  "I guess you could catch the bus," he rejoined.

  "I guess you'd loan me the fare," I said.

  "I guess you're walking."

  An amiable start to our first session of fraternal bonding. I wondered why he was making my departure difficult. True, he was making it difficult for me, not for himself. But if the situation had been reversed I would have done anything to hurry him on his way: driven him home, paid his cab fare, shot him out of a cannon.

  The level of antagonism had not been extreme while we were preoccupied with Carl and Joe Dog. Now we were bare face to bare face, with no intervening threat. We checked each other out only because we were checking ourselves out. Did I really look like that, sound like that, perform such amateurish body language? Was I really hokey enough to throttle my eyeballs in exaggerated horror, twist my lips up like a hooked fish, and fiddle with my pimples as I went deep in thought? He was thinking the same thing (I thought), and the only way to end this unpleasant meeting was to part ways. But I didn't leave, and he didn't offer to help.

  Naturally, our thoughts diverged when it came to the factualities of our lives. He had answers and no questions, I had loads of questions and was getting no answers.

  "Looks like you're in the clear," I said, casting a hand in the direction of the weedy lawn. We were still on the porch. It was getting hot outside, but I had no great desire to go indoors. Todd's mess was no worse than mine, and from what I had seen the trash was of a much higher quality. He might have offered Carl Milwaukee's Best, but I spotted empty Heinekens poking out from under the garbage can lid. There was real porcelain stacked in the filthy sink, as opposed a bin overflowing with sodden paper plates. Yet my trash was permeated with my identity, the occasional whiff of decomposition identifiable and removable, if ever the spirit moved me. Todd's contained all the mysteries of a broken garbage disposal, with lots of maggot potential, and he looked even less inclined than me to deal with it. I continued: "Looks like they don't want your house, your land, or you."

  "What was Sku
nk like?" he asked abruptly.

  "He was a saint," I said.

  "No. Really. Skip the details. Basic. Like, what did he look like?"

  "Like someone you wouldn't want to meet in a well-lit alley," I said truthfully. "If he walked into a church during a Sunday service they'd trample the preacher to death to escape."

  Todd gave me a flat look. "Really that ugly?"

  "He was more mean-looking than ugly," I admitted. "You would have thought he wanted to murder everyone in sight, but..." I shrugged. "I'm still alive. And Sweet Tooth and Doubletalk."

  "Who?"

  "Barbara and Jeremy. Your other alleged siblings."

  "Barbara's convinced," Todd said sourly.

  "She's been out here?" I asked.

  It was the wrong question. He would have driven her out here from Shockhoe one night a half year ago. But for the timely intercession of Carl, an old Oregon Hill tradition would have been renewed in the West End. Still, Barbara must have pestered him to see the property.

  "You sure you don't have a family photo stashed inside?" I said. "I mean, Ben and Liz Neerson are sort of my stepparents, don't you think?"

  This should have been his cue to drive me home. You don't just ask for a gun from a possible enemy and expect him to hand it over. We both knew the weapon-potential of a family snapshot.

  For the second time in as many minutes Todd remained mute before one of my questions. I should have told him my family nickname, triggering a response from him to prove we weren't all that much alike. If I couldn't get any responses I could at least rest my feet. I studied the plastic chairs on the porch and their thick prophetic scrolls of bird poop.

  "Let's go inside," I said.

  "What do you want in there?" Todd asked warily.

  "To sit. You mind?"

  "Kind of," he said. "What's wrong with out here?"

  "Are you blind? If I get crap on my pants, I want it to be my own."

  Todd gave an ugly snort that sounded disgustingly familiar. I silently agreed. Carl's verbal missteps had left unsightly tracks all over the immaculate desert of my mind.

  "You're just like the others, you want to see what you can get." Afflicted by sourness, Todd hawked profoundly.

  Was he right? Deep down...well, not that deep...I was vigorously rubbing my hands together at the prospect of unspeakable wealth. I was surprised by Carl's dismissal of this property as virtually worthless. Location, location, location, right? This piece of dirt was a hawk and a spit away from River Road, the lodestone of upper class wannabes. All you needed was a bulldozer to make it worth a bundle of rubles, even in the current market. Something had told Carl to write off the quarter acre. But reserving his energy for bigger game had to be a tactical error. This was all there was, and it was Todd's to share. Or not.

  "What about your brother and sister, the two McPherson Whatitz? They'll be back, for sure." He wrapped his blue funk around himself like a cape. "Barbara at least has known about me for months, and she didn't say boo to you. She and Jeremy were going to cut you out, bro, if there'd been anything here to cut."

  He had been sharing an abundance of misery with me. I thought it time to dole out some of my own.

  "What about Walter Neerson?" I countered. When he greeted this with puzzled muteness, I said, "I've seen the will."

  "How--"

  "Long story. But there's two names on it: Ben and Elizabeth Neerson. Plus...unnumbered and unnamed children."

  "Doesn't sound very legal to me," Todd groused. "Who witnessed it? Who notarized it? Who's the lawyer and where is it on file?"

  My little thrust had been parried and inserted in my behind. I remembered reading about Vlad the Impaler and squirmed.

  Did Todd know Flint Dementis? If he had a copy of the will, he knew the answer to that question, as well as the names of every beneficiary and witness on Ben Neerson's last will and testament. But he didn't know how much I knew, and that irked him every bit as much as his reticence irked me. By just existing I had the ability to get on people's nerves, a character trait we apparently shared, because I wanted to slug him. He looked like he wanted to slug me.

  "Okay," he relented. "A beer."

  Surprised by this abrupt beneficence, I followed him doubtfully into the kitchen. I was reassured when he gave me a Bud Lite while giving himself a Heineken. I didn't want him to be nicer than me, or anything else that might require me to catch up.

  "You like Bud, right?" he said with a vague sneer.

  "Sure," I answered boldly, flicking my tongue into the can like a hummingbird at a feeder. "And you like imported Nazi suds?"

  "It's Dutch," Todd frowned "Anway, Hitler was a teetotaler."

  I guess that explains his behavior. Anyone who doesn't drink anything at all has a screw loose.

  "You know that for a fact?" I ventured. "Do you read history?"

  "Is that a crime?"

  "In Skunk's family it was," I said. "I got slugged whenever he caught me with a book."

  "Nice guy," Todd sighed, slipping onto a kitchen chair. I joined him at the table, placing my can on a ridge of dried ketchup. Something in his tone snagged my attention.

  "Same in your family?" I asked.

  "Let's just say my father wasn't too keen on book learning," he said. "But Mom wasn't like that. Whenever she wanted to get Dad's goat, she just pointed at me with a book and asked why he didn't do anything to improve his mind."

  This sounded alarmingly familiar. My mother wouldn't dare confront Skunk with his ignorance, not directly, but she made disapproving noises whenever he slugged me for cracking a spine.

  "What kind of stuff to you like to read?" I asked gingerly. Asking someone a question like that is nosy in the extreme, like asking what brand of toilet paper they use.

  Put off by this stab at intimacy, Todd tossed a hand in the air. "All sorts of stuff."

  It sounded a lot like my own agenda, and I backed off, comforted by the thought that I forget most of what I read, anyway.

  "You sure you don't have any way of getting home?" he added, crunching the love into my bones.

  "What's your favorite candy?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "Your favorite color? Do you prefer the original Star Trek, or the Next Generation? Who do you think is the sexiest woman alive?"

  Todd would have tossed his beer in my face if it hadn't been so precious.

  "Go to hell," he said.

  "We're a living experiment," I pressed. "They pay guys like us for research."

  "Research for what?" said Todd, subdued by the idea of being paid just to exist. "We don't have to actually do anything, do we?"

  The path of least resistance. I had to admit, we thought alike when it came to work.

  "Not much," I said. "Answer a lot of questions, get our tongues swabbed for..."

  "DNA samples." Todd clasped his fingers in what was supposed to be a double helix.

  "I wonder," I said, suddenly startled by a remote memory. "Maybe it won't be the first time. When I was a kid, this guy kept showing up to swab my cheek and take blood samples. I guess it sticks in my mind because he was doing it in our den instead of at the doctor's office. It was like Skunk had invited a vampire into the house."

  "Were you sick?" Todd seemed woozy at the prospect of a shared disease.

  "Not that I remember." Vexed by what seemed like silent awareness, I said: "What is it?"

  "I think the same thing must have happened to me. But I'm not sure. It was only a few times."

  "The guy I'm talking about hung around for a year, or it seemed like it. Always popping in with his cotton swabs and needles. I called him Dr. Whacko. Did he ask you weird questions?"

  Todd gave a helpless shrug. "I don't know. I don't even know if it really happened. Maybe you just talking about him planted a false memory."

  I gave him a long look, longer than necessary since I could tell at a glance he was a retard. "Anyway, I'm wondering now if he was getting DNA samples for some reason."

  "You
think it was one of those government experiments? You know, where they plant alien genes in a human to see what comes out?"

  Apparently, he watched the same dumb movies I did. Mars Needs Women. Or, in this case, Mars Needs Morons. Or maybe Mars needed to scrub morons out of its gene pool and was using humans as some sort of Rinso.

  "It's more likely Whacko was trying to determine if the McPherson's bred idiots."

  "Isn't that a relief," said Todd.

  I shrugged. "Anyway, it's kind of hard to deny the obvious."

  "We don't look anything alike," Todd affirmed.

  "Monique couldn't tell us apart. Not at first." I gave him a grim smile, as if holding him to a standard of which I had not partaken. My sexual reputation was dependent on his performance, if his moves and equipment were identical to my own. Sheesh.

  "I was seduced," Todd said blandly. "And don't look at me like that. You know the routine. If I hadn't walked in..."

  "It would have been a far pleasanter afternoon."

  "Yeah, ignorance was bliss," he shot back quickly.

  He had dodged the salacious for the abstract, which wasn't like me at all. Monique's nipple had left a permanent dent in my forehead, adjacent to my memory bank, and I would always regret the lost opportunity. I knew much more now than I had when I woke up on my couch that morning. For sure, my ignorance had involved potential bliss.

  "I guess she was pretty good..." I said longingly.

  "You'll never know."

  "Why not? All I have to do is change my name to 'Todd'." I hoped my grin was more wicked than lame.

  "You think she won't be able to tell the difference?" Todd said hotly. "You really think we're that identical? You want to see how different we are? You want pictures? I'll give you pictures."

  He swooped out of the room and I took a couple of swigs from his Heineken bottle. Okay, germs and all, but I needed proper reinforcement for what I was about to see, whatever it was. Not Todd and Monique in the buff, I prayed. I was thinking more in the line of Skunk in a tux, posing as the respectable Benjamin Neerson, asbestos abatement contractor. How old would the picture be? Sepia or Costco glossy, Polaroid or digital? Who else would be present? Todd for sure, since this was to be the pudding-proof that on such-and-such date and in such-and-such place Todd Neerson (no relation to Mute McPherson and his scummy clan) had been born and raised in a properly segregated environment.