Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "I'm not so sure," said Todd.

  The same doubt crossed my mind. What was she looking for? What would she find? Mom had rarely shown much imaginative propulsion in the years I knew her. But imagination, for the average guy, is silent and unproductive. Staring at my blank TV screen would not have generated this much nostalgia. I wondered if I was imagining a false premise. Maybe Mom had dementia. Not that anyone who showed no interest in instant riches was necessarily mentally impaired. My presence here was strictly involuntary, the result of a brutal kick-start. But Mom seemed to be going all gelatinous on us. Could it be she foresaw the imminent demise of one of her sons? And which son might that be, ha-ha?

  Crap. I might be leading these clowns nowhere, but it was getting me nowhere fast. If I dicked around too long the sun would catch us in the open. The vampires surrounding me were well aware of this. The psychic pressure on me increased pounds per second.

  "A20," Uncle Vern read from the pole I had stopped next to. Beside it was a wrecked Camaro—pre-seatbelt, or I was misinterpreting the pair of outward-bulging starbursts in the windshield. What had happened to the driver and passenger didn't bear thinking about, so I didn't. Besides, judging from the nearby heaps revealed in Uncle Vern's light, half of the other drivers had suffered a similar fate. The non-seatbelt age was a long time back. A lot of these cars must have been relocated here after sitting for decades in various yards and driveways. It was a graveyard of hope, the communal confession that Junior's GTO and Dad's DeSoto were beyond redemption. What better place for dead cars than a dead drive-in in a dead town? Whatever spare parts that could be scavenged had been shipped to Cuba. The rest was silence.

  We were all sweating heavily. We could have been in the Great Dismal Swamp. The valley funk drew gasps from Yvonne, the intricacies of whose personal geography grew more pronounced as she sopped around in her jogging suit. For a moment, I found her curiously attractive, in a wet and wild Brontosaurian way. Maybe we're drawn to the people who look like they might eat us. In which case (taking note of all the eyes focused in my direction), I was about to become the centerpiece of a regular love feast.

  "You really planning to hand over the jewels to the insurance company?" Jeremy asked his twin in a joking voice. He balled his fist, as if preparing the type of arm-punch he had subjected me to whenever he felt clever. I thought it an interesting twist on priorities. He should have asked if Michael had been sticking his identical cock in Yvonne singular twitch. But Michael was having none of his brother's nonsense, whatever topic he chose. He was not going to be sucker punched again.

  "Or else what?"

  Jeremy's eyes widened. "What did you say?"

  He was reacting like an actor whose best line had been stolen in the middle of a premiere performance. I checked out Todd, to see if he appreciated the irony of the moment. He was blandly oblivious. There were key signature lines missing from his upbringing. The reverse was true, too, of course. With a name like 'Todd', he must be chockfull of ghastly biff-esque argot that would pass miles over my peasant head. That should have been a relief, yet I felt I had somehow missed out—on modernity, if nothing else.

  I began to shuffle slowly between the woods and the lot, roughly knowing where I was headed.

  "If you drag your feet any harder you'll bury yourself," said Marvin.

  I wished his choice of words was less apt.

  Uncle Vern made a sound that was almost sympathetic to my plight, unless it was just gas.

  "Why doesn't he go ahead and tell us where it is?" Marvin continued. He had begun to limp, as if he had been shot in the leg instead of the stomach. Even in the poor light I could see his complexion was going bad. A part of me resigned itself to empathy. Life with Skunk could be bad, even if you only knew him for a few seconds. I was still recovering from the wounds my father had given me over the years, and those were only psychic. Not to downplay psychic wounds, but have you ever been shot?

  In deference to the sicko kid, I picked up my pace. Uncle Vern, not anticipating energetic action on my part, quickly fell behind. Before I knew it, I was out of sight. A shout of dismay rose from the group. It had never occurred to them that I might try to escape. For that matter, it had not occurred to me. They were as aware as I was that, if I took off into the woods, I would undoubtedly encounter Ur-Skunks and their super-inbred descendents. (Though one thing you could say for Skunk and Mom: they didn't look alike.) Instead of finding a comfy cinematic grave in the confines of a defunct drive-in, I would be eaten alive, limb by toasted limb, my bones gnawed by dogs even more genetically thorny than that found in my (urp!) ancestors' barfology. But a dead bird in the hand was less alluring than still-living chirpers in the bush. I found my steps quickening in anticipation of a few extra minutes of life.

  "I told you we should have leashed him!" Jeremy bellowed as I dodged behind a car that was more tree than vehicle.

  "Wait!" Uncle Vern called out. "A20! That was his first thought! I'm sure it's there!"

  If ol' Vern thought I had any thought in my head beyond saving my skin, he was seriously deluded. Seeing as the poles were still in place (for the most part) and still legible (for the less part), I could have probably pinpointed the stash in a few minutes. My agenda had changed, though. Life might not be sweet, but sweet and sour had its own appeal. I limbered up my slack muscles and made a powerful turn between two heaps. What I had taken for a gap turned out to be a door—a closed door. I whacked into it hard, but got back to my feet and churned my legs.

  If it had been Uncle Vern's aim to remain unobtrusive, he was aiming high and hitting low. Way low. The shouting was bad enough, but toss in the powerful lamps being waved back and forth (Mom's doubly bright as it reflected off the drive-in screen) and the receptors at Green Bank must have been recording some palpable hits. Alien alert!

  More problematic were the locals, who were bound to hear and see the commotion and conclude the Feds were out in force. Which Feds didn't matter. FBI, CIA, ATF—they were all the same, outsiders intent on destroying their freewheeling way of life and death. Their dialectic was simple: shoot first, shoot again—shoot as many times as it took to get the job done—and leave the questions to any survivors dumb enough to raise them. My bullet-riddled corpse was a foregone conclusion. If they didn't eat me, first.

  I ducked and turned as best as I could, using the odd thorn of light from Uncle Vern's direction to guide me further into the dark. Fortunately, the clown posse couldn't spread out and search without losing sight of their own legs. But a minute later the light intensified. Either Mom had joined in the chase (I wouldn't put it past her) or someone had yanked the flashlight out of her hands. So now there were two clown posses after me. Still, I had a good head start. When I reached the back of the lot I could, if push came to shove (and it undoubtedly would) keep going and lose myself in the woods.

  Whank!

  I had gone head-first into something a lot harder than my cranium. Down I went again. I pursued the lights in my brain until something hissed and darted across my body. Time to get up, no matter what. I rolled over and crawled a few feet, until I encountered—shit! Broken glass. I got to my feet and tried to gauge the direction of the light, then lit out the opposite way.

  A voice cried out: "If you ever expect to see my pussy again, you'd better get your ass back here!"

  Certainly a product of the heat of the moment, which Yvonne must be generating in megawatts as she rolled her big turbine through the automotive jungle. Since she couldn't run me down, she had decided on the spur to lure me back. Pretty counterproductive. There were incredulous shouts and the light suddenly dimmed as everyone swung in her direction. I was too dazed and bothered to imagine the looks on Jeremy's and Michael's faces. But the thought of Todd's smirk of disgust was too vivid to ignore.

  I had run through enough rows to know I was near the alleged treasure. It tickled my fancy. It tickled my fancy sphincter.

  That was a hard hit to the head.

  I didn't pause, I
didn't so much as chance a passing glance. There was no way I could have read the pole number. My head throbbed with the evidence that I couldn't see the big, let alone the small.

  I had not gone far before realizing if I didn't voluntarily pee I would end up involuntarily peeing in my pants. I stopped and unzipped. There was no sense aiming. The new puddle was as invisible to me as pudding on the Moon. I wondered if human urine would keep skunks at bay.

  I finished my business and was hitching my fly when a hand thumped down on my shoulder.

  "Oh Jesus shit!" I exclaimed rhetorically. It was a good thing I had just emptied my bladder.

  "Keep it down, Mute! It's just me!"

  "Sweet Tooth!"

  "Shhhhhh!"

  "Shut him up!" a different voice hissed. I didn't know who it belonged to, but the scent of her orange juice depilatory should have clued me.

  There was a curious sucking-metallic sound. "What's that?"

  "Night vision goggles," Barbara complained. "They're a pain!"

  "Put them back on!" the other woman ordered.

  "But—"

  "There'll be a lot more pain if they catch us!"

  "Monique?" I said, almost instantly threatened by a nocturnal emission. Now that's power.

  "They hurt my head," Barbara said, but from the dull clink I knew she was putting the goggles back on.

  "I can't see…" I reached out in the direction of Monique's voice, hoping to be rewarded with a proper grope. I was, and that reward was rewarded with a sharp slap. She could see where she was aiming.

  "Hey, don't hit him!" I was gratified by Barbara's defense.

  "Why not?"

  My sister could not come up with a good reason. I could almost hear her shrug.

  The voices at the front of the lot were moving again, the shock of Yvonne's verbal bomb having temporarily worn off. They weren't so much chasing me as much as sifting drearily through the wrecks. They knew finding me in this wilderness/junkyard matrix was losing feasibility fast. They were balancing their fear of losing the million against getting chomped in the dismal wilds of Deliverance-land. Then, faintly, out of the chaos of shouting, I heard Mom's voice:

  "Mute, boy, you have a good life, you hear?"

  I was touched. I didn't know if she was sincerely wishing me a happy, luxurious early retirement or if she was resigning herself to losing me a second time. Either way, her voice was so wan and free of bloodlust I was tempted to offer a fond farewell.

  "Who's that?" Barbara asked tightly.

  "Mom. Yeah. You didn't know she was still alive? Isn't that freak—"

  "Moooooommmm!"

  "Holy shit-o-rhea!" I yelled, my hair standing on end. Hearing a McPherson emote was weird enough. But a real cry from the heart made me want to duck for cover. Which, under the circumstances, wasn't a bad idea.

  "You want to get us killed?" Monique was swirling the air with her wrath, which would have been a sight to behold if I could have beheld it.

  "Sweet Tooth?" Mom called out. "Is that you?"

  "You idiot, they shot Carl and Dog!" There was a tussle in the dark. Monique must have been trying to drag Barbara away.

  "But it's Mom!" my sister protested. "I thought she was dead!"

  "We'll all be dead if we don't get out of here!"

  I would have protested if I hadn't gone bust in the head. The Congreve brothers had killed Dog and Carl Ksnip. Of that I had been certain. Or was I? Who was to say it wasn't Michael or Jeremy or even Yvonne Kendle with her butch automatic? I tried to sort out who was where after Dog and Carl had left Todd's house. Only then did I realize how groggy I was. When was the last time I had slept? But wait—this was no time for a nap. I was going to be shot. We were all going to be shot. Sweet Tooth, Monique and me by the posse, the posse by the locals, the locals by the Feds, the Feds by the terrorists, the terrorists by the Martians, the Martians by the…they would have to shoot themselves.

  Mom's voice again floated out over the field of wrecks.

  "There she is!" Barbara exclaimed. "I can't just run away!"

  "It's her or me, sister." Monique's tone was decipherable in retrospect, but I hadn't reached that far, yet. Her choice of words disturbed me. Brothers and sisters abounded in my sorry lifeline—more than I had ever known. Even as metaphor, sibling rivalry was disturbing me.

  "Monique, it's my mother!"

  "The bitch who dumped you in the gutter with diddle-twerp."

  "Hey!" I said, then winced. She could have meant Doubletalk, or even Skunk himself. I was demeaned by my premature conclusion. Monique acted as if having her sit on my lap was my one and only wet dream.

  We were abruptly blinded by a blast of light. Barbara and Monique yelped in pain as their vision gear scooped up a billion trillion photons and threw them directly into their retinas. For an instant I saw them in their grotesque, oversized goggles, like those humans in Star Trek absorbed by malevolent machines. They whipped the gear off and clutched at their eyes. Using my hand as a shield, I turned to Jeremy and Michael.

  "You little fuck," Jeremy cursed. "You try that again and we'll shoot you."

  "You have gun?" I asked.

  In the flashlight's backwash I saw his face turn to steel.

  "One of has one, and he'll shoot you."

  A nice little revelation. He had forgotten Yvonne's gun in her van. He was not so fearful of them that he felt the need to be armed. The three of them—Jeremy, Michael and Yvonne were to one degree or another in this together. Still, for not bringing the gun I had to credit Jeremy with some dork points, which I found irritating. I didn't want my worst known enemy to be likable.

  The rest of the posse poured out from between the rows. They gaped at my sister and Monique, decked out in camo jackets and pants, looking like day-old dead turtles. I guess they planned to go deer hunting if the treasure didn't pan out. Mom spotted Barbara and ran to her, giving her a heartfelt hug. At least my own heart melted, dribbling out in a gunky mess on my shoes.

  Still blinded, Barbara reacted to the unseen hugger with a violent burst of woodshed kung fu that was a lot more fu than kung, but which still managed to knock Mom down.

  Jeremy looked at Michael and said, "Help her up."

  "You help her up."

  I glanced at Todd, who was already staring at me. One of us would have to make a show of obeisance. I stared a little longer and he stared back.

  "You're the one she chose to live with," I said finally.

  "You think she was doing me a favor?"

  There was no question that, in the absence of our twins, any one of the four of us would have done the right thing. But we had not had a chance to work out our rivalries. None of us knew who was dominant in the pecking order. Our misapplied egos froze us in place.

  With a grunt of disgust, Uncle Vern handed his flashlight to Marvin and helped my mother to her feet. By then, Barbara had recovered her sight enough to see what she had done. She rushed forward and tried to hug Mom, but Mom pushed her back.

  "One big happy," said Marvin. "You girls mind telling me how you found us out here?"

  Several of us shouted "GPS!" and laughed.

  "On both your vans," Monique added wickedly, squinting at us.

  The laughter stopped. At the same moment, there was drunken laughter in the distance. It sounded like a party, but we couldn't be sure.

  "Anyone here have a gun?" Marvin asked, rubbing his stomach gingerly.

  "I just happen to…" Monique took a pistol from out from a pocket in her camouflage jacket and pointed it roughly in our direction. She must have still had stars in her eyes, because she never saw Uncle Vern jump forward to snatch it out of her hand. Although I have to add, ol' Vern moved pretty fast and could probably have gotten the gun from any of us.

  "Shit!" said Monique. "I got enough of this crap from Dog."

  "Ruger SR9c," said Uncle Vern, tilting the gun this way and that. "Nice and light. The perfect sidearm for a lady."

  Monique snarled.

 
; Carl's recitation finished, he took the flashlight from Marvin and stood back, the gun lifted in our direction. "Well, finally, I can have peace of mind."

  "Uncle Vern!"

  "Don't you 'uncle' me, you little shitwit," he snapped crisply at Marvin. "It's your complete idiocy that put us in this predicament."

  "But—"

  "There isn't a single person here I can trust," Uncle Vern interrupted, aggrieved.

  "Vern…" my mother said gently.

  "Stay put. You're the one who got Skunk to hand over the Brinks money to you and worthless here."

  Todd made a sound of protest. I made a different sound.

  "Skunk still had feelings for you," Uncle Vern said to Mom. "I won't call it 'love'. I won't even call it 'like'. Whatever it was, you used it."

  Mom didn't wilt. Uncle Vern himself had called her a lady, and she used it against him. She drew herself up regally, all trace of dementia gone, utterly.

  "You know that's not the truth. Not all of it. And you know why we're here—"

  "Silence!" Uncle Vern yelled. Straight out of a comic book.

  Monique and Barbara were making throaty sounds, a real pair of drowners.

  "What is your problem?" Uncle Vern asked.

  "Who is…that?" Monique had finally concluded the two Jeremys were not reflective artifacts of the light zap.

  Barbara pointed at Jeremy, then Michael, then Jeremy. She checked out the clothes, and switched back to Michael. "You're the one at Starbucks! You were pretending to be…" Back to Jeremy. "Him!"

  "Son of a bitch!" Jeremy shouted.

  "Careful…" Michael said, nodding at Mom.

  "Son of a bitch!" Jeremy repeated.

  "Later," Marvin said. "Right now we've got more pressing business." He sounded like his uncle.

  "I didn't do anything," Todd whined. "I'm a victim."

  Marvin and I laughed in unison. This drew a baleful look from Uncle Vern. "And you…you knew all along where the jewels were."

  "So sue me," I said. "Anyway, I thought it was cash." Boy, that was productive. He pointed the gun between my eyes.

  "Okay."

  I had said 'sue', right? I hadn't said 'shoot'?