Fever Tree

by Tim Applegate

‘Scuse me, Colt. Can I talk to you a sec?

  The bouncer hesitated, unsure what to do. He hadn’t spoken to the stripper since that awful day out at Teddy’s, and he didn’t particularly want to now.

  About what?

  Please. It’ll only take a second.

  With a curt, unfriendly nod he slipped behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of Heineken and brought it over to the table where Nicky had already taken a seat.

  So what’s on your mind, Nicky?

  The stripper lowered her eyes, unable to meet his flat gaze. I wanna apologize.

  Oh yeah? For what?

  For my behavior the other day. Over at Teddy’s.

  Even when she was offstage, Nicky Meyers tended to project a sense of self-confidence bordering on cocky. But not tonight. Tonight she appeared shy and uneasy and her clothing reflected this change in attitude too, a conservative skirt and blouse replacing the trashy outfits she usually favored.

  I didn’t know Teddy was gonna pull something like that. It was rotten. I should have said something.

  Colt didn’t know if Nicky was sincere but she sure seemed repentant. He took a sip of his beer, waiting for her to continue.

  The way he brought up your father. That was totally uncalled for.

  When Colt didn’t respond, Nicky forced herself to look at him. Listen, what I wanna say . . . well what I really wanna say is if you ever need someone to talk to, about your dad I mean, or anything else, she quickly added, I’d be glad to listen.

  Once again flustered by Colt’s refusal to reply, she reached into her purse and handed him a scrap of paper.

  That’s my number, okay? Just in case, you know, you change your mind. She rose to leave, smoothing her skirt with the palms of her hands. And I hope you’ll find a way to forgive me, Colt, I really do.

  Colt stared at the phone number, recalling the smirk on the stripper’s face the day she witnessed his humiliation. He’d vowed, then, to never speak to her again. And yet now that she had formally apologized he could afford, he supposed, to be generous.

  Hold on there, girl.

  Halfway to the door Nicky paused, slowly wheeling around. Colt made her wait for a minute, holding her gaze until she lowered her eyes in embarrassment.

  Fine, he finally said with a shrug.

  Fine?

  Fine. I forgive you.

  You do?

  The relief on the Nicky’s face was palpable. Okay then! With a yelp of joy she skipped back across the room, bent over the table, and planted a kiss on his lips, briefly sliding her tongue in. Then she breathed into his ear, Call me, and Colt couldn’t help himself, he wanted more, he wanted all of it, every damn inch. He contemplated Nicky’s exquisite hips as she wiggled toward the door and twirled around at the last moment to blow him a playful kiss. There was no doubt about it, Nicky might be the most histrionic stripper in the club, but this was a side of her he had never seen, a glimpse of vulnerability that gave lie to the brassy persona she projected onstage. She was just as lost, he thought, as everyone else.

  On the drive home that night he replayed the scene over and over in his mind. How Nicky had been unable, at first, to meet his eyes; her quiet, respectful voice when she mentioned his father; her prim and proper clothing. By revealing humility and admitting regret she had sunk a hook into his heart and he didn’t want to dislodge it just yet. He fingered open his shirt pocket to make sure the scrap of paper with her phone number on it was still there.

  As he turned off the highway onto Pheasant Hill Road he saw the flashing emergency lights of a stranded vehicle. A late model Ford Escort was pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and a young woman with a stricken look on her face was standing beside it. As his headlights caught her in their glare, the woman lifted a tentative hand.

  Colt parked his Camaro and slid out. He nodded at the Escort.

  Car problems?

  The stranded driver was a pretty, petite Hispanic with a plume of jet-black hair tied in a long single braid down the middle of her back. Sí senor. The engine . . . how you say? Overheated?

  With a bit of a swagger—the handsome gringo coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress—Colt took control, grabbing a flashlight from his glove compartment and stepping around to the front of the woman’s car.

  But as he reached under the hood to lift the latch, something moved in the trees to his left, rattling the dry brush. A possum, he thought idly, or maybe a raccoon. Then whatever it was moved again, and when Colt swung the hood open he realized that the shadow emerging from the woods wasn’t an animal but a man.

  The gold tooth gleamed in the dark as Colt tried to shield his face with his hands, an instant too late. Before he had time to react, the jagged end of a broken bottle knifed through the air and slashed open his left cheek, down to the bone. His legs collapsed and he fell to the ground and for a few moments the only sound came from the cicadas in the trees. Then the bottle shattered on the pavement and Colt curled into a fetal position even though he knew that this was fruitless. His attacker’s fists, and boots, were like pistons. Before he blacked out he heard the woman cry out for the man to stop, but that was fruitless too.

  14

  After toiling late at the office on a tax-evasion case due to go to court in less than a week, Howard Simmons was at home on his patio mixing the single nightcap he allowed himself on a workday evening—two fingers of Absolut vodka with a splash of Perrier and a slice of fresh lime—when the phone rang.

  They found what?

  The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Pursley, a precinct captain not opposed to accepting occasional monetary gifts from men like Howard Simmons in exchange for information like this. A male, he answered, mid thirties, out on Pheasant Hill Road.

  Simmons swirled his cocktail, a buzz of excitement building in his blood. Dead?

  Not quite.

  I see. Taking a sip of his drink, Simmons let the tension drag out, because sometimes the actual facts were such letdowns. And this unfortunate man has been . . . identified?

  He certainly has, counselor.

  As?

  As one Colt Taylor.

  Simmons smiled, relishing the news. Vengeance, Santiago style. The only question was what had taken so long.

  The weapon?

  Broken glass was discovered at the scene. It appears the weapon was a beer bottle.

  Of course, Simmons thought, what else?

  And the severity of the wounds?

  About what you’d expect, Pursley drawled, from a broken beer bottle.

  Simmons set his drink down on the patio table and gazed out at the harbor lights glittering in the dark while Captain Pursley, in a lethargic rattle of a voice exacerbated by forty years of smoking, filled him in on the details. Following up on an anonymous phone tip from a male with a decidedly Hispanic accent, a patrolman named Kershaw had discovered the unconscious victim lying in the middle of Pheasant Hill Road bleeding from a dozen different wounds, mostly facial. Unable to staunch the flow of blood, Kershaw had called an ambulance, which transported the victim to the Panama City hospital, the closest emergency room open that late.

  With his free hand Simmons scribbled a series of notes on a yellow legal pad, anticipating Teddy Mink’s eventual questions. The name of the patrolman called out to the scene, the nature of the wounds, the alleged weapon. With a smug look of satisfaction—brazen violence, after all, trumped the hell out of tax evasion—Simmons topped his drink off with another splash of vodka. Ever since the incident at the Black Kat Club three weeks ago he had been anticipating Jimmy Santiago’s revenge, a bet he would have laid odds on, and now won. For if there was one thing the lawyer had learned in his twenty-odd years of criminal practice, it was that no one ever forgot, or forgave, a wrong.

  I want to thank you for calling, Captain. It’s always a pleasure, even under circumstances a
s dire as this, to hear from you.

  My pleasure, counselor.

  Hanging up the phone, Simmons consulted his directory and dialed Maggie Paterson’s number, the second time he had called the poor woman in the last three weeks. Not that she would be, he supposed, particularly surprised to hear what he had to tell her. You lie down with dogs you wake up with fleas. He shook his head at the vagaries of the human heart. Such a bright and engaging young woman; why choose a loser?

  At the Panama City emergency room a doctor informed a distraught and exhausted Maggie that Colt’s numerous wounds had required a staggering forty two stitches to close. There were also, the doctor continued, referring to the patient’s chart, at least three broken ribs as well as a nasty contusion in the lower back caused, he speculated, by the toe of a boot.

  The next morning, following a final examination by the attending physician and an abrupt, inconsequential interview with a local detective who had already been instructed by Captain Pursley to close the book on the case as quickly and quietly as possible, the patient was released into Maggie’s care. In the hospital parking lot, she helped him climb into the passenger seat of her jeep, waiting until he maneuvered his throbbing body into a tolerable position before turning over the engine and easing out of the lot, joining the flow of traffic on Bonita Drive.

  Thanks to Raul’s parting shot, a swift boot kick that caught Colt square in the jaw, it was painful to speak, and Maggie had to roll up her window to hear him.

  Have you told Hunter yet?

  Not yet.

  Behind the puzzle of bandages that swathed most of his face, Colt mulled this over.

  So where is he?

  At Lureen’s.

  Okay. Colt grimaced as Maggie swerved to avoid a pothole. I guess that’s okay.

  Maggie tried, without success, to keep the strident note out of her voice. Okay? To tell you the truth, I don’t see as I had much choice.

  Colt lifted a rubbery hand to ward off her outburst. No no, of course not. Grimacing again, he tried to lean forward a few inches to ease the pressure on his ribs. I didn’t mean it that way.

  The first day back home, buzzed on painkillers, he never left his bed, allowing Maggie, as long as she was willing, to wait on him hand and foot. She called into work to request an extra day off, staring up at the ceiling as Cain the Pain offered his condolences for her troubles (which everyone in town had apparently already caught wind of) before assuring his “favorite cashier” that she could take as much time off as she needed because he, the Pain, was there for her, come hell or high water, darlin’, come rain, snow or shine. Suppressing a derisive laugh—darlin’?—she redialed the phone, calling Lureen to confirm that Hunter was coming home on the bus after school and not stopping at his aunt’s house to play with his cousin Toby. Then she gathered up a handful of root vegetables from their truck patch for a stockpot of soup, laid Colt’s meds out in sequence on the kitchen counter and finally, re-entering the bedroom, reminded the patient of the doctor’s orders to drink, whether he wanted to or not, eight glasses of water per day.

  After lunch she knelt down like a penitent on her hands and knees to scrub the kitchen’s linoleum floor. It was imperative to stay busy and keep her worrisome thoughts at bay. On the drive over to the hospital in Panama City she had concluded, once and for all, that despite his most recent litany of promises Colt was never going to change, and that this was no longer acceptable. As the jeep sped down the empty highway she made up her mind. No more trips to emergency rooms or holding tanks, no more phone calls from Howard Simmons in the middle of the night. When Colt recovered from his injuries she would simply announce that it was time for him to leave. Cutting the man loose wasn’t going to be easy, and yet what else could she could do now but take stock of her situation, admit her ghastly mistake, and start over?

  She would stay in the cabin with Hunter, the only shelter the boy had ever known. The rent was cheap, the landlord mostly absent, and while the idea of raising a child alone was more than a little daunting, the alternative, granting custody to the father, was unthinkable. She would allow Colt to see his son whenever he wanted to if he gave her sufficient prior notice and if in exchange he agreed to handle the separation like an adult, for Hunter’s sake. When Colt and Maggie’s paths happened to cross they would remain civil, putting up a brave front to ease the child’s understandable distress. They might even agree to attend, side by side, certain benchmark events in Hunter’s life: graduations, ballgames, school plays. But no matter what Colt said or did, Maggie would never let him weasel his way back into her good graces, which is precisely what, she was fairly certain, he would eventually try to do.

  Hearing the school bus grind to a stop at the end of the driveway, she charged outside into the spotlight of the sun as the door wheezed open and the driver, unreadable behind his Ray-Bans, stared right through her without the courtesy of a gesture or a word. Ignoring the surly driver—what was his fucking deal?—Maggie leaned over and kissed Hunter on the cheek before looping an arm around his bony shoulders to usher him down the lane.

  On the back lawn she wrestled off his backpack and set it on the grass. Listen, honey, there’s something I have to tell you.

  He looked up at her with those big brown eyes and she felt her resolve momentarily falter. It’s your father, she finally said, your dad . . . She wasn’t quite sure how to put this. How do you tell a six year old that his father’s face has been cut open with broken glass?

  He’s been in a little accident.

  The brown eyes grew wide but the voice remained small. What kind of an accident?

  Maggie knelt down and squeezed both of his arms. She felt like a water pipe under immense pressure, surely about to burst. Remember how I told you that you have to be careful around strangers because there’s some bad men out there who might try to do you harm?

  Yeah?

  Well one of those bad men attacked your father last night. And he beat him up pretty good.

  She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t handle the sudden fear in the boy’s eyes, so she stared over his shoulder at a sparrow hawk gliding over the treetops on a current of invisible air. Once, in a 747, she had pressed her face to the little oval window to gaze down, with something like love, at the beautiful, broken world . . .

  Mama?

  She was plummeting back to earth, falling through space. She squeezed the boy’s arms again. Now don’t you worry, honey, your dad’s gonna be okay.

  Hunter bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling. Are you sure?

  Of course I’m sure! It’s just gonna take awhile, ‘kay?

  A trace of a smile: brave, heartbreaking. ‘Kay, he said.

  They crept down the hall. Lost in a tangle of sheets Colt stirred when the light from the open doorway spilled across the bed. Gradually his puffy eyes focused on Hunter standing in the doorway as if awaiting permission to enter the room.

  Hey, buddy. He patted the rumpled sheets. Come on over here. Don’t be afraid.

  Shocked by his father’s resemblance to a mummy, Hunter looked up at his mother for confirmation before timidly crossing the room.

  15

  When Maggie arrived at the store, her father met her at the front entrance. On any other occasion Frank would have held her at arm’s length, beaming with pleasure at this lovely creature he had somehow, in the throes of passion, helped create. Look at you, he would have said, little Maggie Paterson, the apple of her daddy’s eye. But no such endearments were forthcoming today. Today Frank’s brow was furrowed with concern, the lightheartedness that made him so attractive to even the most casual acquaintances nowhere in sight.

  C’mon in, honey. Let’s go back to the office. I made us some tea.

  Maggie sipped from her Mason jar, cringing a bit at the tea’s cloying sweetness. When she was a little girl she had craved this sugary concoction more than any other, pedaling ho
me from the movies on a Saturday afternoon. But those halcyon days had faded into memory a long time ago, replaced by the world of adulthood, which as the years raced by became more and more incomprehensible. Among other things she had to worry about now, there was her figure. On the drive into town it had occurred to her that without Colt around she would soon be forced to negotiate her way through the minefield of available men again—adult dating!—an idea so preposterous she nudged it right out of her mind.

  Even though she knew that Lureen had already painted the broad picture—a wanton attack by an unknown (wink wink) assailant out on Pheasant Hill Road—Maggie wanted to make sure Frank understood that no matter what happened to Colt from here on out, she and Hunter were not in harm’s way.

  Those people he hangs out with. Frank stared at the floor, unable, or unwilling, to finish.

  I know, Daddy. Believe me, I know.

  Teddy Mink. Jimmy what’s his name, Santiago.

  In lieu of a rejoinder, Maggie swallowed another gulp of tea while Frank continued to contemplate the floor, wringing his worried hands.

  Lureen says he’s gonna be okay. Frank looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. Is that true?

  Maggie frowned at okay; words were so relative, and sometimes meant nothing at all. Well he won’t look the same, that’s for sure. But no, there’s no permanent damage.

  Coulda been worse you know.

  Yeah, I know.

  Coulda been dead. Frank hesitated again. Raising children had once seemed like such a gift, the world through his daughters’ innocent eyes. What about you, honey? You okay, too?

  She felt the sting of tears and turned away, pretending to study the new chifforobes out on the showroom floor: walnut veneers, beautifully book matched, from across the rolling sea. I’m fine, Dad, I’m just fine.

  But she wasn’t, really, and neither was he. So she went ahead and blurted out the big news, describing how, when she gave Colt his walking papers, he had obediently packed his suitcase and marched right out the door. As if he had been expecting this, she added, all along.