“Give it a rest, you’re killin’ me.” He cuffed Lemmen on the arm and started down the hallway. “Let’s get this over with.”
The door at the end of the hallway was open. Inside was a dimly lit den. A mahogany desk sat in the middle of the room. A chair behind the desk faced the wall, smoke rolling above the headrest in fluffy swirls. “You two gonna stand there with your thumbs up your asses till you drip-dry or you wanna have a seat?” Ron Ronney spun in the chair and pointed to a black leather couch with two plush terry cloth towels draped over the arm. “Dry off and sit down.”
Chappham grabbed one, tossed the other to Lemmen. They soaked the water from their necks and arms. Lemmen tugged the towel back and forth over his baldhead as if he were buffing out a size ten wing tip.
“You straighten things up with Smale?” asked Ronney.
“Sure did,” said Chappham.
She took a long draw off her cigarette and French inhaled the smoke, giving it a three-minute tour of her lungs. “Any problems?”
Chappham shook his head.
“Just one,” Lemmen injected.
Ronney turned and eyed Lemmen through the smoke. “Which is?”
Lemmen held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “It’s just a little one.”
Chappham cleared his throat.
“Ah,” said Ronney, “The comedian. And this little problem; is it funny?”
“Well, I don’t think it is.”
Ronney tapped a finger on her desk, the long, manicured nail making loud pecking noises on the mahogany top. “Let’s see if I do.”
Chappham shook his head, a silent signal for Lemmen to shut up.
Lemmen laced his fingers over his stomach and sunk deeper into the leather couch. “There’s really no good way to tell you, so I’m just gonna say it. Chappy here, he’s been in a huff all day about the pay we been gettin’ for our services.”
“I don’t believe it for a minute.”
Lemmen’s head bobbed. “He said you’d say that, said that’s what made the deal so sweet, watchin’ you sweat and knowing you can’t do squat about it.” He watched as Ronney’s finger continued to tap the desk. The clicking sound reminded him of those hideous flesh-filled jaws snapping up Smale’s limp body.
“Deal?” asked Ronney. “What deal?”
“It’s simple.” Lemmen nodded at Chappham. “He came up with it. Being a stand-up guy, he decided to include me.”
“Go on.”
Lemmen smirked. “It’s easy. You pay what Chappy asks and that smelly load of carnivorous fish flesh and the damage it does, stays secret. If you don’t…”
Chappham grabbed him by the collar. “Liar.”
“I tried to talk to him,” Lemmen continued. “He just wouldn’t let it go. He told me not to sweat it, said we should put the bite on you and if you didn’t come through, we’d just sink you.”
Chappham’s eyes shot daggers, one in Lemmen’s head, one through his heart. “You little shit; you ain’t the first bonehead who’s tried to play me against the boss. And they were all smarter than you.”
Ronney crushed out her cigarette. “Well, gentlemen, it appears we have a situation, don’t we?”
Lemmen nodded. Chappham said nothing.
“So,” Ronney continued, “I guess, I’ve got no choice in this.” She pulled a .38 from her desk drawer and shot Lemmen between the eyes. She rose and walked to Chappham, still sitting on the couch next to Lemmen. She pushed Lemmen to the floor and eased down next to Chappham. “You were right, Chappy, he couldn’t be trusted. I can always count on you to put the bee on ‘em.” She nuzzled his neck and kissed his ear. “I’m glad the dreadful little bastard’s gone.”
Chappham kissed her long and deep, wrapping his fingers around her hand, still gripping the .38. “Guess you won’t need this anymore.” She released her grip on the revolver, surrendering it to him. He thumbed back the hammer, shoved the barrel into her chest, and pulled the trigger. She slumped on the floor next to Lemmen. Chappham hovered over her lifeless body and whispered in her ear. “To quote the late Cliff Ronney, no one can really be trusted.”
He pocketed the .38 and loaded Ron Ronney and Jerry Lemmen into the back of the Envoy, careful not to let too much blood leak on his carpet. He cursed himself for not bringing more plastic. Now, he would have to find someone to detail the Envoy and get the stains out…someone who wouldn’t be missed. He eased the truck out of Ron Ronney’s driveway and began his last grueling trip to the lake. Once he had fed the thing, he would sink the boat. Then he could think about getting a real job, something far away from the water.
—END—
The Fish in the Fields
C. Dennis Moore
The fish were in the fields again. Wyatt sighed, dropped his shovel, in a throwing it at the ground sort of way and went back to the house.
In the kitchen, he complained about the fish and how work on the farm was never done, while grabbing his gloves and a laundry basket. Stu sat at the table, eating a bowl of cereal and studying something on the back of the Apple Jacks box.
“He awake yet?” Wyatt asked before heading out to collect the fish.
“Nope,” Stu replied.
Just then, a voice screeched upstairs. “WYATT!!!”
“Jinx,” Stu said with venom. He left his half-finished breakfast on the table and disappeared out the back door. It slammed against the frame, making Wyatt flinch, knowing the racket would only raise Pop’s ire even more.
He considered sneaking back out, pretending he had never been inside at all. But Pop would know. He climbed the stairs like a man who knows that at the top, he’s going to find a big bucket of shit, and then he’s going to have to eat it. On the other hand, Wyatt thought that bucket might not be such a bad prize, considering what he was going upstairs to.
“Stop it. That’s your father,” he commanded himself.
Halfway up the stairs the smell hit him. At least it hadn’t reached downstairs yet, he thought. He and Stu could still sit in the evenings and pretend everything was fine. However, not for long, he realized. It was late August, and with the heat so thick and heavy, the entire house would reek with the old man’s stench. For now, he could reach the eighth step, before it hit him.
He got to the top and Wyatt had to make a conscious effort to walk into the room.
When he got there, he kept his eyes down. To look at him . . .
“Breakfast!” Pop demanded.
Wyatt slunk back downstairs and grabbed the oatmeal from the counter.
He spied Stu outside traipsing across the field. His younger brother stepped on something, flinched and almost fell. Then he bent down and picked up a fish. It was nearly two feet long, brown and covered in blotches with dozens of small, spiky teeth in its gaping mouth. Stu had always hated touching fish and he held the thing by the anal fin while it twitched and flexed. Its mouth gaped, sucking in air. Stu carried it to the edge of the pond and tossed it back in.
Before Wyatt spent too much time pondering, breakfast was ready. Yep, he thought as he trudged back upstairs, the work is never done.
* * *
Later that night, as they sat at the table eating in silence, Wyatt thought about the fish. They cleared ten from the field that afternoon, dumped them all right back in the pond. The first time they appeared, he had considered it strange luck and if the good Lord wanted to provide them such an easy dinner, who was he to argue? However, the fish were long and thin, and tasted like rotten potatoes. Since then, he and Stu just dumped them back into the pond and went back to work. They had watched them scurry across the field, so he knew they could cross over land, but he’d never seen them before and had no idea where they’d come from. This had been going on about a week.
Suddenly, Stu broke the silence with, “We gotta take him, man.”
Wyatt ignored him. Stu added, “You know I’m right.”
“You take him, then,” Wyatt said. “And you tell ‘em what happened.”
�
��That’s not fair and you know it.”
“It’s what they’ll think, though. You gonna try and prove otherwise?”
“Then at least change the bandages. I’m starting to piss out the back door, so I don’t have to go up there and smell him!”
Wyatt shoved his half-eaten hamburger away. He did change Pop’s bandages that night while Stu sat downstairs in the dark, wishing he had the balls to go up and help. Pop fought and raised hell the rest of the night, so fierce and constant, neither brother could sleep, one lying awake on the couch, the other in the recliner, because to sleep upstairs in their rooms was out of the question. And in the morning, the fish were in the fields again.
* * *
Wyatt knew what happened to Pop had been an accident. But no matter how many times they went over it, it always sounded bad. Pop and Stu had been at each other’s throats for a good week, because Pop hadn’t wanted him out here to stay, but Wyatt said Stu was family and they couldn’t turn him away. The whole week had reached a boiling point when Stu, covered in dirt and muck from helping Wyatt outside all day, had taken a particularly long shower. That had been it for the old man who stood outside the bathroom door banging and yelling for almost ten minutes, while Stu was doing the best he could, but the stuff was caked on. After a while, the banging and yelling got to be too much for him, and he finally threw open the bathroom door and yelled, “What the hell is wrong with you, old man?”
That didn’t sit with Pop. He would be shown respect in his house.
“Other people live in this house too,” Pop yelled, “and those people are the ones paying for all that water you’re using up, so what you need to do is get out of my bathroom and I‘ll tell you when you can shower.”
“First of all,” Stu said, “Wyatt’s the one who pays that bill and Wyatt’s the one who busts his ass day and night on this farm to make that money. And if you want to go that far, I’ve done more work around here than I’ve seen you do lately, so part of that money is mine, and maybe that means I’m paying those bills, so in that case, I’m gonna take as long a shower as I feel I need to take.”
You didn’t talk to Pop like that. It just wasn’t done. That’s when he shoved Stu. And that’s when Stu shoved back. And, that’s when the old man stumbled into the wall, lost his balance, and tumbled down the stairs. Their father was not a young man and it was one hellava fall. The racket was terrible and when he hit the floor at the bottom of that flight, his skull was cracked open and bleeding.
Their property sat just outside Ridgebury, close enough to be part of the town, but far enough outside it would take an ambulance forever to get there and they couldn’t just leave him on the kitchen floor like that. So they hauled him up to bed and Wyatt bandaged his head. Stu asked him if he was going to call someone, but Wyatt just stood there staring at their father for a long time, until he finally shook his head and answered, “They’ll take you in, you know.”
Stu wilted and looked away.
“It was an accident,” he said.
“The Sheriff knows Pop. He might not think it was an accident.”
“Then, what do we do,” Stu asked, “just leave him up there to bleed to death?”
“It looks a lot worse than it really is. Just a gash. It’s not gonna kill him. He probably just needs to rest up there for a few days until the swelling goes down, and it’ll heal up pretty soon, I think.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
Instead of answering, Wyatt went outside and watched the sun go down.
The next morning was when the fish first appeared in the fields.
* * *
It was more than just a gash, and it didn’t heal. It got worse, got infected, and the old man got meaner. And of course, the infection filled the house with its stink.
They were searching the fields for fish, trying to make sure they collected all of them, when Stu asked, “How long do you think he can last up there like that?”
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
Neither had Wyatt, but he didn’t reply. He didn’t want to talk about it. He grabbed a fish off the ground, dumped it in his basket, and looked for more.
“It was an accident,” Stu said.
“You say that every day, Stu,” Wyatt replied. “I know it was an accident. Nothing to do now but deal with it.”
Wyatt spotted another fish. That was fifteen already, and he bent to grab it, but was stopped by a voice calling from near the house, “Hello?”
Wyatt looked at his brother, both wondering WHO? Stu shrugged and they walked back to the house.
“Hello?” the voice called again and they heard footsteps going up the porch. Wyatt dropped his basket and jogged to beat whoever it was before they knocked on the door.
“Hello?” he asked, just reaching the front of the house.
“Hello?” the visitor repeated, coming back down the porch steps and walking over to shake Wyatt’s hand.
“Hi,” he said, “My name’s Dave Jones with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The brothers exchanged confused looks and Wyatt said, “Uh, all right.”
Jones was a short man with short red hair and freckles. He looked like a young man trying to look older, and it wasn’t working.
“We’re in the area,” Jones said, “searching for fish. We’ve been having some problems with a Northern snakehead infestation in Ridgebury Lake and Catlin Creek, and we’re canvassing the area to make sure we don’t miss any.”
“Northern snakeheads?” Stu asked.
“It’s a fish,” Jones explained. “An invasive species. It doesn’t belong in this area and can affect the ecosystem.”
“I don’t understand,” Wyatt said.
“You have a pond on your property?”
Wyatt nodded.
“These fish can travel over land,” Jones said, “live outside of the water for three to four days. Your pond is close enough to Ridgebury Lake to consider it a haven, so what we need to do is determine whether the snakeheads have found your pond, and if so, we need to destroy them.”
Wyatt held up a hand.
“Wait a minute, all this over a fish?”
“The Northern snakehead is a top-level predator,” Jones said. “They’re not native to this area. They breed fast and they feed on other species. Have you come across any strange fish in your pond or . . . anywhere on your property?”
The brothers looked at each other again and Jones said, “Is that a yes?”
Stu nodded.
“Can you show me?”
They took him around back to the field and showed him their baskets, and how many, they had already collected. Jones pulled out a cell phone and spoke into it.
“This is Jones. I’ve got a positive ID on a farm just outside town. We need to set up a CFT dump as soon as possible . . . Right . . . Right . . . Perfect, thank you, sir.”
He put his phone away and told Wyatt, “Sir, we’re going to return tomorrow afternoon with a chemical called CFT Legumine. It’s a liquid rotenone formulation and it’ll take care of the problem. We’ll contact you later today with the details.” Jones took Wyatt’s number, thanked him, and he was gone.
Stu said, “What the hell?”
“I don’t know,” Wyatt said. “Everything’s so screwed up. Fish in the fields, Pop upstairs like he is . . .” He sighed, screwed his knuckles into his eyes to rub away the stress, then bent to pick up another fish that had flopped out of the basket and was scurrying away. “We have to figure out a way to keep him quiet while they’re here tomorrow,” he said. “I was afraid he was gonna hear him up there screaming, but he might be sleeping.”
“He’s not gonna sleep with a bunch of people traipsing all over the place.”
“You got that right,” Wyatt said. “Shit!” and he dropped the fish he was holding, then looked at his hand, at the blood running down his palm. He raised his boo
t and stamped it down on the snakehead that was trying to wriggle away across the ground.
“Piece of shit!” Wyatt said. The fish had taken a chunk out of his palm; the meaty swell just behind his index finger.
* * *
Wyatt hung up the phone and told Stu, “They’ll be here around three, he said.” Stu nodded, spooned something that looked like sugar over a bowl of oatmeal and handed it to his brother.
“You,” he said. “I can’t. I know he doesn’t remember what happened, but it’s the way he looks at me, he . . . senses it, or something.”
“He doesn’t sense anything,” Wyatt said, taking the bowl. “He just doesn’t like you.”
“That too.”
Wyatt took the bowl upstairs, trying to breathe in as much apple and cinnamon as he could to stave off the stench of Pop’s infection.
“Bout time!” he snapped. “And tell that truck to SHUT UP!”
Wyatt nodded and stepped closer, holding the bowl in both hands, ready to move if Pop happened to lash out again. He pulled a chair over from its place against the wall.
“It’s apple cinnamon,” Wyatt said.
“I told you I hate maple, sugarman.”
“Apple cinnamon,” he corrected.
“That’s what I said, don’t you tell me!”
“Right.”
He scooped up a spoonful and fed it to him. Wyatt hated watching him eat.
The old man’s hair stuck in dried-bloody clumps to his skull, some of it plastered to his forehead with sweat. The parts that weren’t bloody were filthy. His left eye had gone cloudy and stared off in some other direction. It was hot upstairs; they had no AC or central air, only a few oscillating fans, but they were little help against the summer heat rising from below. Pop ate without really chewing, only moving his lower jaw in a bad imitation of that particular motion, the food caking around his lips and tongue until he somehow managed to get it down his throat. Feeding took forever.
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