Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "I'm not sure where to begin," Uncle Vern said as he forged into the darkness beyond the interstate lights.

  "You might begin by keeping your eyes on the road," Marvin carped. He must have had eyes in the side of his head, because he remained glued to the rear screen, concerned that Yvonne would miss the turnoff.

  "Skunk McPherson was one of my first students, a long time ago," said Uncle Vern musingly.

  "You're a teacher?" I asked.

  "Chortle yuck guffaw," snortled Marvin.

  "Until recently, I held cappella oenological classes at several of the prisons."

  "Which is?" I asked, though I knew I risked another turn of the head away from the road when he answered.

  "The art of playing wine glasses and goblets."

  I was tempted to turn on the overhead light. The moonglow from the sphinct-ometer did not tell me if Uncle Vern was silently laughing. Really. Skunk playing music on delicate wine glasses? It was enough to make me turn in my grave, which I half suspected was where I was headed. But now that I thought about it, I remembered the times he sat with his beer bottle ("Never drink suds from a can," was his credo), circling the rim with his huge index finger. He never drew a tune out of the narrow mouth, but he could still be practicing his technique.

  "Surprised?" Uncle Vern smirked, looking directly at me. It was almost ungentlemanly. "And he could raise the loveliest high C out of a 120 milliliter Mikasa. It made my heart sing."

  Yeah. Wild thing.

  "So...he got brownie points for doing that?" I inquired. "One minute knocked off his sentence for every note he hit?"

  "Performance in my group was noted in his parole evaluation, certainly." He craned his head and noted the full moon overhead. "Should be a plenty of light for the disinterment."

  "Jewels, right?"

  "I was just getting to that. What I'm about to tell you is no secret to anyone else here."

  "It was until last winter," Marvin interrupted his uncle with a fervent snarl. "And for the record, I think we're being followed."

  "Of course, by—

  "Someone else took the off ramp behind Jeremy."

  "People do reside in these hills," Uncle Vern grumped. "We'll be passing through McDowell, site of one of Stonewall Jackson's victories. And there have to be other hamlets."

  A Hamlet in every hamlet. Deadly sword thrusts in every direction. I hadn't poured poison in my father's ear—but wait, here was an uncle. Not mine, but someone's uncle. And uncles are famously disreputable. Had he slept with....

  I forced literary nonsense from my head and sat on the brass facts.

  "My father was a musician?"

  "He had a good ear," Uncle Vern shrugged, dismissing any notion of a Bach in the family. "Reverend Cawfield thought well enough of him to consider bringing him into his group, the Crystal Angels. But, of course, he was desperate for a token white. And he only had to spend five minutes with Skunk to know he wanted nothing to do with him."

  "There's more than one...uh, orchestra?"

  "It's very therapeutic for the inmates," Uncle Vern said with what I thought was a trace of sarcasm. If it was a waste of time, why had he bothered? But that was what I was about to learn: it had not been a waste of time. Not by a long shot.

  "The prison system is riddled with preachers. Why do you think so many inmates get born again? It's a national disgrace."

  "I take it you aren't a church-goer?" I said.

  "Of course I am. You can't run a business without copious hallelujahs." Give him credit, his hypocrisy left a bad taste in his mouth. But that was just the church side. I didn't know it at that moment, but Uncle Vern was one of the biggest hypocrites this side of John Edwards. And he relished it.

  "Uncle Vern, if we're going to reach where we're going maybe you'd better hold off on your story until we reach where we're going." Marvin had swiveled a second screen and was trying to watch front and back. He had apparently seen something flit across the road, something I had missed because I was looking at Uncle Vern.

  "There's no license for backseat drivers," Uncle Vern groused.

  "I've got this set on low light," Marvin shot back. "I can see the road better than you."

  "Wait, you missed that!"

  "What?" Marvin frantically demanded, shooting his eyes back to the forward screen.

  "The horse's ass," answered Uncle Vern. "Now to answer your question, Todd—"

  "I'm not Todd," I said quickly. "But now that you bring it up, how long have you known him? And my mother?"

  "Too long," Marvin said, smarting over his uncle's remark.

  "I've known your mother almost as long as I knew your father," said Uncle Vern. "A very sweet and intelligent lady."

  You could have floored me with a feather. Two highly improbably adjectives attached to an unlikely noun and emphasized by a flattering adverb to round off the impossible. He had to be confusing her with Marilyn vos Savant.

  "The last time I saw you, you must have been three or four," Uncle Vern added. "It wasn't until this business with the lost money that I saw you as an adult."

  "But you knew what I looked like," I said, glancing over my shoulder. "Every step of the way."

  "You're skipping the important part—like how I ended up with a bullet in my gut."

  I was already peering into the cargo bay and needed only to shift my eyes a little to look at Marvin. I couldn't blame him for his priorities. Sure, he had blown away my two daddies.... On second thought, yeah, I could blame him. He was still walking, right?

  "I've told you endlessly that it was a mistake," Uncle Vern said with a gratifying trace of whine.

  "I think you called it an act of God."

  "If it hadn't been snowing—"

  "Snow isn't an act of God, Uncle Vern. It's called 'weather'."

  Etymology wasn't up Uncle Vern's alley. "Well, if Skunk had had sense enough to carry a cell phone, then."

  "He didn't believe in cell phones," I said. This stirred a few stares out of the soup. To lay the reason at cost or inconvenience (and the buttons were too small, way too small, for his thick fingers) would have registered with reason. But to make it a matter of a belief system strained their credulity. I explained: "He told me that once he set out to do something, he didn't want to be called back. 'One Way Skunk'—that was Dad."

  "One way down a dead end," Marvin observed, absorbing the role of tough guy like a soggy sponge.

  "Will someone allow me to begin at the beginning?" Uncle Vern complained. "Otherwise, what happened that day makes no sense."

  Between shouts from Marvin warning of non-existent boulders out front and a possible shadowing menace out back, just beyond Yvonne's van, Uncle Vern rolled out his tale. Actually, it turned out in part to be my tale, which he elaborated upon with all the relish of a cat toying with a bad pun. I think he hated me for no reason, but since he hated Marvin too (with good reason), I figured he hated all twenty-four year old nonentities who occupied valuable space. Some people behave as though you owe them rent for rooming in their world scheme—utilities (like oxygen) not included. He must have hated Todd, too, since he was the spitting image of a twenty-four year old nonentity.

  Skunk was and always would be a bad egg, but Uncle Vern took the extra step and broke the yolk. My father had already sampled several of the state's juvenile correctional facilities by the time he met Uncle Vern.

  "Believe it or not, the state has a version of the ROTC in some of its facilities. When he was a juvenile, your father enlisted—I think he liked the idea of getting paid to kill people—and I was surprised to learn he lasted a full day. Then the commander made the mistake of barking out the wrong side of his mouth and Skunk decked him. Even at fifteen he was...imposing. When I met him a few years later I was advised by the warden not to try and bring him into the Glass Heads, that he was incorrigible to the nth degree."

  But Uncle Vern had seen something in my father. I suspected what he had seen was evil incarnate, but ol' Vern insisted it was the int
elligence of reason—guffaw. Granted, Skunk had some street smarts, but not enough to keep him out of the slammer. He lacked the vital talent successful crooks deemed necessary to graduate to the big time: the ability to not get caught.

  "Reverend Cawfield would have nothing to do with your father. He was the Kapellmeister of the Crystal Angels, after all, and he wanted only the purist virgins in his choir. Not that he was a complete nincompoop—he knew there was a dire shortage of saints in the system. But if your prospects for release looked good at the next parole board, you were a shoe-in with him. Whereas I took the hard cases. Not the lifers, of course. They wouldn't do me any good."

  "Something to do with jewels..." I said. "I don't see the connection."

  Uncle Vern's voice got smaller as he continued, as though he was drawing into a shell and I was hearing his faint echo. He wasn't ashamed of what he had done. It was the reluctance of a forced confession.

  "Mr. McPherson, in case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a thief." Alerted by Marvin of movement ahead, Uncle Vern slowed to allow a possum to cross the road. A thief with a soft heart? He continued: "The guards usually left my group alone when we practiced. They didn't like us. They don't particularly like any of the teachers in their prisons, who are paid a pittance but still make more than the average guard."

  "Salary envy," I observed.

  "Very much so. A fertile field for temptation. My being an unpaid volunteer made for better relations with the authorities, but they were still cautious. I would be locked in the music room—really no more than an unadorned classroom—for hours at a time with hardened criminals."

  "With glasses," I observed.

  "Oh, there was no danger any of them would shatter a glass and use it as a weapon. Reverend Cawfield might have that problem, but the prisoners had more at stake in my music class. When it came to keeping my students in line, the Good Lord was second fiddle."

  "You offered them money?" I asked.

  "In Cash we trust," Marvin snickered.

  "You're awfully quiet back there, Todd," said Uncle Vern. "You still with us?"

  Marvin leaned sideways for a closer look at my twin. "Out like a light."

  "Anyone else want to catch forty winks?" Uncle Vern inquired. "We have a ways to go."

  I envied my brother's oblivion. I sure could have used a snooze. But Uncle Vern didn't look all that alert himself. Like Marvin, I wanted to remain available to kibitz the driver.

  "You organized a band of robbers," I said, forcing both Uncle Vern and myself stay awake.

  "Rather than make a long story longer, let me explain that...years ago..." Uncle Vern paused, searching for a better light to put on his villainy. Which meant putting it in the deep shade. I seriously doubted that a fraction of what he was about to tell me was true, but prejudgment is a guaranteed soporific, so I guzzled down the caffeine of his lies.

  "I wasn't born a lapidarian. I had the entrepreneurial spirit, and I knew I wanted to start a business once I got out of college. I started out small: a dry cleaners, a five-table restaurant, even a book store."

  "All floparoonies," inserted Marvin.

  "I had the gumption to try, you slug-a-bed. I must say, selling jewelry wasn't on my radar. I knew many of the larger jewelers are family-owned, and have been that way for a hundred years or longer. You have to invest inordinate sums to build your inventory, and it's a big plus if your daddy hands down his stock and clientele base to you."

  "But you still went into the business," I said.

  "As it so often happens, through chance. I happened across an estate sale and bought a collection of very nice paste jewelry. Only it wasn't. For an estate appraiser to make a mistake that big—it's unheard of. I suspect the appraiser never put in an appearance and some temporary employee slapped a $50 price sticker on the jewelry box without thinking twice. Fortunately for me, there were no living relatives to point out the mistake.

  "I didn't know myself how much they were worth until I had them appraised. The jeweler gave me a look and said, 'These aren't plastic'. At which point he demanded to see my receipts, proof of provenance, anything to show him the jewels weren't stolen. When I finally convinced him of my innocence—"

  "Ha!" That was Marvin, but it could have been me.

  "Well...I was young at the time. Your age, in fact, when face value is all you have to go by. Anyway, I learned I was the proud owner of $78,000 worth of diamond teardrops, emerald earrings, carcenets, ruby-studded fascinators, even a bloody tiara. I was abashed by my ignorance, and by the real possibility that I might have sold off the jewelry for a couple of hundred and counted myself lucky."

  "You fell in love with the business."

  "Not at all. I couldn't get over the look of greed and disgust—it's a peculiar combination—when that appraiser realized I didn't know what I had. He wasn't the one who gave me the true value of the jewels. He tried to buy the collection for $500."

  "Ah...a crook."

  "A businessman. My kind of businessman. But with no acting ability. I was in no position to build up a proper inventory, but I thought it best not to start from scratch. So I checked out some smaller establishments, places that sold real fake jewelry, not the phony genuine stones."

  Needing a moment to grasp this, I held up my hand. The moment passed and I nodded. Uncle Vern continued:

  "I can't say I made a great success of the venture. I almost went bust several times. And then I found out what a chump I was."

  Marvin did not stifle his cough. When he recovered, he added: "And I still think we're being followed."

  Uncle Vern looked in the rear view and grunted. "I don't see anyone but Jeremy."

  We had just passed through the town of Jennings Gap, a bucolic burg with real houses, real stores and a very real sense of early morning desolation. Anyone else on the road at this time had to be treated seriously. I checked the passenger mirror and saw only one pair of headlights.

  "Where was I...?"

  "You're a chump," I said helpfully.

  "I was a chump. I forgot that like any other business, whoever gets the niche first has all the advantages…unless you're IBM handing out free operating systems to Microsoft. Mom and Pop had their gizzards stripped by Wal-Mart, and there's no going back. And there's nothing quite so cutthroat as the jewelry store business.

  "I learned how to use the Diamond Price Guru and bought my diamonds at Rapaport-price, sorted out the best B2B wholesalers, made some contacts in India—now they appreciate gold. Okay, so I pushed blue-white on the unsuspecting, made sure any flaws were hidden under the prong—but nothing worse than they do in New York. And through all this, I kept before me the memory of that first cretin, the man who had appraised the jewels from the estate sale. His expression had said everything: I was a mark and didn't know it, someone to take advantage of because of my ignorance. I was determined to amend that situation, but the more I learned about the business, it seemed, the more I was taken advantage of. I was being laughed at. In short, I was the perfect candidate for the vice-presidency of the Dominion Jewelers Association."

  This abrupt turn caused me to raise my hand again, summing up my confusion with a cogent, "Huh?"

  "I picked out the lobbyist who helped shoot down some ridiculous ethics regulations before the General Assembly. I was a keynote speaker at the annual conferences. Gave speeches on evils of the FTC, how to shoot down lawsuits, how to avoid taxes. Most important, though, I visited jewelry stores throughout the state."

  "You were casing them!" I exclaimed.

  "It's amazing how far hobnobbing with the owners got me. I was even able to get a close look at their security systems."

  "It almost sounds to me like you were planning to get even before you had a reason to get even," I observed.

  "How so?" he asked.

  "Didn't you found the Glass Heads before you started staking out the jewelry stores?"

  "No, that came later, when I became respectable."

  "Ah," I said. "So you set up
the whole musical glass thing just to—"

  "Don't confuse my great love for music for something sordid!" Uncle Vern said with some heat. "I mean...we adapted Mozart's Adagio for Glass Harmonica in C, and we did very well!"

  His pride was genuine enough, misplaced or otherwise. But let's face it, you can float on a lake of crap just as well as on the clearest chlorinated pool.

  "All right," said Uncle Vern, detecting the vibes of disbelief all around and within. "I got the glasses at an estate sale—a different one—and I thought I would put them to good use. Our church makes a big deal out of visiting inmates. Have you heard of the Eagle Outreach? Our minister was already involved with a number of programs—he had mentioned the inmate glass musicians in one of his sermons—and I told him about my little purchase. He went bonkers. He had been using cheap stemware from Discount Mugs, and wanted me to loan him my set for concerts. He invited me to come along. Insisted, really. He was that proud of his group."

  "And you did this with the idea of forming your robber band?"

  "Worse than that. I piggybacked on God's reputation. My pastor, Reverend Smith, began to mention me in his after-sermon announcements. I fit in nicely between local deaths and the time for the next Presbyterian Kaffeeklatch. Somewhat to my astonishment, business at the Ice Boutique began to pick up. This encouraged me to invest more time in the Glass Heads. I got to know more about my musicians—Reverend Smith's musicians, I mean. And then came the day I ran into Skunk McPherson." Uncle Vern cast a look in my direction. "I'll bet you didn't know your old man could be something of a schmoozer when he wanted to be."

  "He wasn't a con artist," I protested, defending my father's reputation. "He was a stiff-arm man."

  "'Strong'," Marvin snickered.

  "Well, he conned you then, didn't he? All those years spent in virtual poverty. Two brothers you never guessed existed. A supposedly dead mother who was in fact alive and well in the West End. Shall I go on?"

  "Can you?"

  "Not to put too fine a point on it: the existence of me. You never heard of me, yet I was central to your life."