Skunk Hunt

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "What, Marvin? You think I exaggerate?"

  "Well, that. You also sound semi-conscious."

  "Your sister brought in Carl and Dog because she and Todd here felt the need for muscle. They were entering a dangerous world, or thought they were. In fact, they imported the danger needlessly. I know shady characters and they belong...they belonged...how about a singalong?"

  "Eyes on the road!" we all shouted as Uncle Vern swerved onto the shoulder.

  "Yes, yes," he said, more or less correcting.

  "Who do you think killed them?" I said. If he had nothing to do with the deaths, we still might be in hot-to-boiling water. Fear might succeed in keeping him awake. Certainly, we weren't doing a very good job. "If whoever shot them is still on the loose—"

  "Oh, I'm sure it was the Congreves. The police haven't released the information yet, that's all."

  "You might be right," I said.

  "You might be wrong," Todd said.

  "I might be stardust," Uncle Vern sang.

  "It might be you," I said.

  That opened his eyes a bit. "You can just remove that suspicion from your rapidly diminishing excuse for a brain."

  Wow, ad hominem. You would have thought he was mistaking me for Marvin. Personal attacks are usually the last resort of the guilty, who have run out of plausible alibis and can think of nothing better to do than to verbally stomp their opponents. In this case, though, I had to grant him a higher handicap. He was too woozy to conjure up reasonable motives. It was a good thing the increasing number of drivers around us didn't know his condition. Sure, we share the road with all sorts of undesirables and undependables. Drunks, felons fleeing from the scene, dipsomaniacs, maniacs of all kinds, people high on elevated egos, prescription and non-prescription drug abusers, people with Alzheimers who didn't know they have Alzheimers, or people with Alzheimers past knowing they have Alzheimers...people you wouldn't want to meet on a sidewalk, let alone the high-speed lanes. But what would our fellow roadies think of us? We had just spent the pre-dawn hours digging up a corpse, the murderer of whom had in all likelihood had also once shared this road—with Dr. Whacko in the trunk. It had happened almost two decades ago, but I felt the lingering cachet of death. Or maybe it was just road kill.

  Todd raised a protest when Uncle Vern turned onto the Downtown Expressway. "This isn't the way home!"

  "Yes it is," I said.

  "I wasn't thinking," Uncle Vern confessed. "Of course, I'll drive you to the West End as soon as we drop Mute off."

  "You're parked at my place, remember?" I reminded my idiot reflection. "How can you forget a Jaguar?"

  "Before you say anything else, it looks like you'll be able to afford your own now," my reflection shot back.

  "I wouldn't sink my hard-won money into four wheels," I said with a superior air. The height of white trashitude was to buy a Caddy while the house fell down. I was consistent, at least. Both my house and my car were heap-ready.

  "Ever figure out how your car got back home?" Todd asked, veering away from the subtext.

  "Oh, that was Dog," said Uncle Vern, confirming my suspicion. "We saw him pull up in the Impala while we were staked outside. I think the intent was to strand you at Todd's so he and Carl could rummage around inside your house uninterrupted. They never considered the possibility that Todd would give you a lift."

  "It almost came to that," I said. "Me not getting a lift—"

  At which point Uncle Vern almost slammed into a toll booth. He made a last-second swerve into the Cash Only lane and braked beside the booth. The attendant stared at him. Seeing the van coming at her, she had begun to review her past. She needed a few moments to rev back to the present. Uncle Vern handed her a dollar. As she returned his change, he gave her a hard look.

  "Don't I know you?"

  "I hope not, sir," she replied, quickly tossing fifty cents into the bucket. The barrier rose, but Uncle Vern stayed put.

  "Aren't you one of my nieces?"

  Marvin leaned forward for a look into the booth. "Hey, Deb! I didn't know you worked here. Don't you recognize Uncle Vern?"

  "Yeah," she grimaced.

  "You finished packing for the big trip? I've been too busy to talk to your mother."

  "I'm not going. I don't speak Spanish."

  "Portuguese, numb-brain," said Marvin.

  Car horns farted behind us.

  "You want to move on, Uncle Vern? Oh, and enjoy your new home. I'm staying here, where everyone who doesn't want to kill me lives."

  "Oh Deb, that was a slight miscalculation," Uncle Vern joshed. "You don't really think I would have hit your booth, do you?"

  Todd and I nodded silently at each other.

  Uncle Vern was nonplussed. "You really need to come along with us, Deb. Expand your horizons. Meet new people."

  "I meet new people every second. Now would you please move, Uncle Vern? These folks have to get to work."

  "The only legitimate emergency is diarrhea," Uncle Vern espoused, and with this soggy avuncular bon mot sped away for the nearest ramp—the same exit where Skunk had given me my most painful driving lesson.

  "Hope my Jag's still got tires," Todd said dolefully, still thinking that Oregon Hill was it's old self. Uncle Vern was so sleepy he had shifted out of character, into a nasty adolescent mode that tripled his moral risk as a driver. Begging a ride out of me might be distasteful for Todd, but it was better than hitting 80 mph without a paddle.

  "I don't know," I said to Todd. "It depends on if Dog melted my hubcaps." A reference to a quaint local custom of stealing cars and driving full-thrust while braking. We called it 'doing the cha-cha'.

  "Hey, I wasn't asking for a ride," Todd snapped counterproductively.

  "Of course not," Uncle Vern swooned. "I'm giving you a ride."

  Marvin was in the middle of a gaping yawn. "Oh shit," he moaned after closing his mouth.

  "Actually, I'm thinking of getting off with Mute," Todd said. "You know, catch up with old times."

  "You two don't have any old times."

  "I thought if I showed him my DNA, he'd show me his."

  A perfect opening for Marvin, but he was too exhausted to take advantage of it.

  "Fine, fine," said Uncle Vern, pulling up in front of my house. "Oh look, crime scene tape. You'll have to cross the line. Oh look, a police lock on the door. You'll have to break in."

  "Whatever," said Todd nervously.

  "Be it upon your heads," Uncle Vern slurred. "Deb will talk, Todd will talk, Mute will un-mute. It's downloaded in the stars. We'll all become Glass Heads and share a jail cell in purgatory."

  "Vern?" I said.

  "What?"

  "Why don't you and Marvin crash at my place. It's better than...uh...crashing."

  "You're too kind. But I have to keep track of Michael. Marvin planted a microdot gizmo on him...somewhere about his person."

  GPS heaven. Or hell. Maybe they were all geosynchronous addicts.

  "You don't trust him? But you said—"

  "Does a mouse trust an aardvark?"

  "Hey, Vern, you won't be tracking anyone." Todd drew our attention to Marvin, whose face was absorbing alphabetic impressions from his keyboard as he snored away.

  "Out like a light," Todd added unnecessarily before sliding open his panel. "Adios."

  I was out of the van, too, holding the passenger door open as I entreated Uncle Vern one last time to accede to the demands of nature.

  "I have a mattress—"

  "Bedbugs I don't adore," Uncle Vern chanted. "Please close the door and let me go."

  A funny line from the man—one of the men—who had more or less kidnapped me.

  "You don't trust Michael that much, to risk wrecking—"

  "Door," Uncle Vern said.

  I slammed the door shut and offered a prayer to the god of chariots that he made it home without demolishing himself and assorted others.

  So.

  This was the moment.

  Todd and I had shared
a minute or two alone before in the last couple of days. But this was the first time we faced each other without a great irresolution hanging over our heads. Plenty of gaps, for sure—but now I was fairly certain he had not been bizzy-beeing my death at the hands of nefarious conspirators. I couldn't be 100% positive, of course. But how sure can you be, Mr. Bourgeois Homesteader, that your lovey-dovey isn't planting the seeds of your destruction up your fertile wazoo? Think about that before questioning my qualified trust.

  I looked at him. There wasn't much to see, because it was me, of whom my opinion is...well, I think I've made that clear.

  Todd must have had a better opinion of himself, because he looked at me with what I thought might be grudging admiration.

  "It's not so bad around here," he said.

  "Huh?"

  "Well, look..."

  My God, he had eyes and he could see. The neighborhood students were rousing themselves for a day of classes (taken or skipped) and other mandatory sophomoronisms: going to the river, blathering about movies and other content-free media, starting a day's drunk-fest. They were already stirring, hanging off stoups, strolling nearly naked down the sidewalk; hawking up sputum from chain-smoked evenings, weaving uncertainly in the dawn's early light. And for all that, there was something fresh about them. I won't say redeeming, beyond which they were in spades. But they had their own little hopes, and that sort of thing can be mildly contagious. I began to wonder if the day had not been such a philosophical loss, after all.

  "How do we get in?" Todd asked as he watched a student leap out of Uncle Vern's path.

  "Simp," I said. Ducking under the yellow tape, I worked my way past the yard-clutter, hopped up onto the porch, pushed a tattered couch out of the way, and opened the front window. "The cops don't think obvious, just SOP. I figured they wouldn't check the windows. Two doors is all they can conceive."

  Todd joined me and we stooped inside.

  I had assumed we would be entering an empty house. My bad.

  Jeremy and Michael were standing like a couple of cardboard crapouts in the front room. Sitting before them, filled with pensive confusion, was Old Man Flint Dementis, his handy-dandy Smith & Wesson 39 pointed at them parenthetically, giving him the option of taking them down with two quick shots.

  "Hello, Mute, hello, Todd."

  His 'hellos' came out sounding like halos.

  "You know me?" Todd asked, remaining stooped for a dash out the window.

  "I said your name, didn't I?"

  There was a discreet cough to my right. I turned. Yvonne was slumped in the armchair on which I usually piled my old Playboys. She had carelessly tossed the magazines on the floor to make room for her bulk. Miss November 1976 was staring up at me, accompanied by her lusty teddy bear. Patti McGuire. I knew them all by heart.

  "What are you doing here?" I asked her.

  "I'm with Frick and Frack," she sighed, heaving herself sideways and pulling out a December issue that she had missed.

  "Okay, what are they doing here?" I glanced back at Flint. "What is everyone doing here? And where's Mom?"

  "She's sleeping in the van," said Yvonne. "And what are you doing here?"

  "I live here."

  "I know that. But why come back? Why not go to Todd's? You knew the police had blocked this place off."

  "Lot of good it did them," I said, waving at the others.

  "You came just in time, Mute," said Flint, hosing me down with his eerie glare. "I want to make damn sure which one of these is Jeremy. I haven't seen him for a while, and I can't tell these two turds apart."

  "Why is it important?" I asked.

  "I wouldn't want to shoot the wrong one, now would I?"

  "Shoot them both," I shrugged. "That way you can be sure you got the right one."

  "It might come to that," Flint cackled as Jeremy turned and punched me in the arm. Flint slapped his knee. "Gotcha! I have my answer." He nodded at Michael. "You can move out of the line of fire, now."

  "Fine," said Michael, throwing himself into another ratty armchair and forcing a cloud of dust out of the cushions. I hated seeing my domestic shortcomings put on public display. I growled at him through my pain.

  "Is there any reason you guys aren't taking this nutso seriously?" Todd said, squeezing his ass against the window frame.

  "What makes you think they aren't?" Flint almost shouted.

  "Mute says shoot them both, for one. You know he doesn't mean that. And when we came in, Frick and Frack didn't look particularly scared—"

  "How do I know you aren't Mute?" Flint demanded with a demented look. True, he always looked demented, but this time his complexion was heightened by conviction. Flint added, "You sure sound like him."

  "Todd, this is Flint Dementis, Skunk's old drinking buddy," Jeremy said casually, like a museum guide pointing out a boring lump of fossilized dinosaur shit. "He wouldn't hurt a flea on a dead dog."

  "Say you," said Flint, taking the gun in both hands to steady it on his target.

  Todd was right, the little prick. As soon as I had entered my house and gotten over my surprise at finding it infested by morons, I had taken the whole scene as a joke—hence the crack about shooting Jeremy and his twin. The modern adage that we dehumanize our enemies was, in my case, holding true. Seeing my brother in front of a presumably-loaded gun had done nothing to improve him in my eyes. He was just a thing that inflicted pain, a fact to which my roaring shoulder attested. Worse than that, though, was that Flint was just a thing, too, who reinforced the joke by aiming a gun at Jeremy. In fact, we were all things, bowing before contingency and hopelessly addicted to surface impressions. It was an act from a thingy comedy, and I had played my bit part.

  I won't say I had a change of heart, but if you changed the comedy to a drama, all these play-acting things suddenly became vital and poignant. Like, holy crap, flesh and bullets are solids. Pain is solid. And whatever else you might think about these things, they were each enwrapped in feelings. Know what, Einstein? When push comes to shove, feelings are all that count. Play in your ivory castle all you want. That's what makes humans superior. But feelings are what make us human.

  Oooo-boy, what an inconvenient moment for a shallow yet valid revelation. I dealt with it as best I could.

  "Flint? I'm sorry."

  "Sorry, Mute?" he said, still focused on Jeremy.

  "That you got involved in all this. It was Vern who came to you, wasn't it? Who talked you into planting that clue in your footlocker? Who got that picture of you and Skunk onto my coffee table and sent me off with Sweet Tooth to Belle Isle. Vern used you—"

  "You got it all wrong, Mute, but I admire you trying to sort out this mess," Flint said. Something that may have been a smile peeked out from under his scar tissue, like a kid peeking out of a haystack. "Most folks would give up after the first headache. You're right about Vern paying me a visit and taking the photo, and dippy-do on everything else. It was me doing the arm-twisting, make no mistake. Vern was sure Skunk had told me where something was hidden, and I'm not just talking about the body you dug up this morning."

  I whirled on Jeremy, willing to risk a punch for the truth. "You told him!"

  Jeremy was wearing his best innocent expression, which on him produced the sugary topping you see on ice cream and used car salesmen. "Wasn't me."

  There was no reason to believe him—we're talking Jeremy here, after all—so I turned to Michael and Yvonne for confirmation. They both shook their heads. There was no reason to believe them, either.

  "Don't fuss your feathers, Mute," Flint said. "I know about Penrose because I'm the one who made him dead."

  "No you didn't," I gasped.

  "See this?" Flint lifted the gun a little. "Smith & Wesson. It's an old friend of mine, accompanied me on two tours in 'Nam. Never had to fire it in sheboomee-world—I was up in the Huey most of the time. But I never thought I would have to use it once I was back in-country. Oh sure, I wasn't lying. Once a year I stick the barrel in my mouth and
start counting backwards from ten. But Mom always catches me before I reach zero. All these years, and she can still smack sense into my head. But then there came a day when I fired my first shot—right between that idiot Whacko's eyes."

  "But...why?"

  "I'll get to that. First, though, I want to make sure Doubletalk here has the proper respect for the situation." He leered up at my brother. "You don't believe a word of this, do you?"

  Jeremy gave a sarcastic twitch of his lips.

  "Let me tell you, then...the Smith & Wesson 39 holds eight rounds. I've only ever loaded it once. The first shot was Whacko. The second I used on a rat out back. The third I used on the rat's cousin, and another on one of his cousins. The fourth and fifth I used to plug those two in Mute's bedroom. That leaves me with two shots, Doubletalk. One of these bullets has your name on it. It always has."

  "You killed—"

  A noise at the window drew our attention. A long, bare leg slipped inside. When the next leg logically followed, we were treated to a beaver-peek as a shapely derrière shimmied backwards into the house. Monique did not realize she had a non-paying audience until Yvonne picked up a cushion and threw it at Michael. This being an alternate dimension where dirt was the primary element, the pillow exploded with dust on the side of his head. He let out an oath.

  Monique whipped around with a flexibility that was made all the more gratifying by her tank-top and hyper-short shorts.

  "What the—"

  There were a few titters, but no one was up to outright laughter. Jeremy especially had lost his sense of humor. Not only was his girl stepping out with his brothers, but a little light had filtered through a chink in his brain—or maybe that tiny chink was his brain. Flint was serious, the gun was serious, and in a minute that last lone bullet might be playing serious mayhem with his body.

  Monique saw Flint with the gun, but like the rest of us when we first entered she didn't take it seriously. She was more concerned about the voyeurs among us.

  "Better come in head first, Barb, unless you want to put on a show."

  Todd and I had been anticipating a bit of visual incest, but hid our disappointment when Barbara's head poked through the curtains. She placed both hands on the floor and grunted. Her athletic skills had always been limited. Monique pulled her through and a moment later she was standing before us, grinning stupidly. Maybe she thought she had won a spot on the Olympic B&E team. Like Monique, she had ditched her camouflage. No need to hide yourself from wild game in downtown Richmond, right?