by George Wier
In the balmy Texas night, bats darted to and fro gobbling down moths and mosquitoes in the parking lot lights, and Julie stood behind me in the doorway in just her bra and panties, waiting for me to come inside and be good to her.
Inside the room, lights off, the blackness near complete, Julie and I once more got into the act; doing what teenagers and old married folks and even animals do.
And sleep came.
I had dreams in which old truck drivers adopt little kids and barbecue tastes like new money. And then I had the dream.
My dad and I were fishing in the late afternoon. The mosquitoes had been buzzing in my ears despite several layers of bug spray and the sweat was running down my cheeks and spine. The river was a mirror for the sky, reflecting each cloud, each ray of sunshine perfectly. I was hungry and tired and anxious and I hadn’t had so much as a nibble. I was gazing at the white hemisphere of my cork, floating immobile, as if it were embedded in a sea of glass. I could almost see my reflection in the cork. My line was a strand of angel’s hair or spider-web silk making a series of long, undulating indentations in the water.
The cork went under fast, disappearing into obscurity, into the upside down alien landscape that existed beneath the mirror in which I was fishing.
I felt a tug, a strong pull, and for an instant I got a mental image of my alter-self sitting on an upside-down embankment, pulling with all his strength.
The little Zebco fishing rod nearly pulled free of my hands. I pushed all of my strength down into my fingers, my wrists, my lower arms, my biceps, and pulled back hard. The pulling from down below gave a little and I was winning.
“Got something?” my father asked, but he said it slowly, like his mouth was filled with Karo syrup or he was on twenty-eight rpms instead of forty-five.
I did have something. Something big. I pulled it further in. I remembered that I could reel-in and pull at the same time. I cranked hard and fast on the reel, my rod bending double. I thought it might snap before I landed what was on the other end.
I got the sense that something was coming up toward me, almost could feel the slickness of it against the cloying, cottony river bottom silt on the embankment below the surface. And what was coming was not a fish.
“Not a fish,” I tried to tell my dad, only no sound came out. It was like I’d gotten too much peanut butter wedged up against the roof of my mouth.
I saw two white things down under the water as the cork came up into the air, and I could see something waving, as if blown by the wind. It was hair.
The body had been dead in the river for eons. No fish or eel or crawfish would touch it, because the dead hands brushed them away each time they come near. That was why it could pull against me. But I’d snagged it. I was bringing it in.
The two white things were eyes. They were dead and knowing and accusative all at the same time.
When the head broke the surface the eyes blinked at me. The mouth opened and gallons of water spilled out.
It was someone I knew.
“Oh,” my dad said at Driving Miss Daisy speed, “It’s just a hank. Kill him and throw him back in.”
The hank was reaching for me, green and gray fingers dripping river bottom mud, contorted, grasping at the air just a short space from my ankles.
The hank’s other arm stretched up, dislocated from its shoulder and grasped my hip and squeezed.
It was Julie, squeezing my hip. I’d been nightmaring again.
She shook me.
“Awake,” I managed to mumble. “Ahm awake.”
She stopped.
I turned and curled into her, my stubbly cheek pressing against her soft breast.
She hummed me back to sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I was awake instantly at the sound of the gunshot. Someone was shooting outside our door.
Julie’s eyes were open wide and staring into mine in the gloom. Through cracks in the window curtains I could tell it was almost dawn.
Another window-rattling shot rang out.
I didn’t even think to grab my gun. I thrust my legs into my slacks and didn’t even bother with a shirt. I left Julie twisting in her bed covers and thrusting two pillows against her ears.
Outside. The morning was cool and fine.
Hank was there leaning up against the Suburban. He had a deer-rifle that I’d not seen before and he bolted home another shell as I called out his name.
“Hank! Goddammit! What the hell are you doin’?”
He looked at me. There was a sad and somber look on his face.
His left hand moved and the rifle recoiled down against his leg.
BLAM!
He was already reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniels on the Suburban running-board. Where the hell had he gotten that?
“Got eighteen more to go,” he said, slurring his words almost beyond recognition.
“Eighteen what?” I asked.
He didn’t bother to reply. He reached for another shell. There was an open box of them beside the whiskey bottle.
I noticed Dingo slinking back into the partially opened door of Hank’s motel room, her tail between her legs. Apparently she was not beyond fear, if not downright embarrassment.
“That’s enough,” I said. “Come on, give me the gun.”
“No can do, keem-bo-sobby,” he said. “He deserfs a twenty-one gun salute.”
Clang! He shot the bolt home.
“Who?” I said.
“Dock.”
BLAM!
The shot echoed off the walls of the old tourist court motel. Hank nearly dropped the gun. He was likely to have a nasty bruise on his leg later, the way he was taking all the recoil just south of his hip.
“Hey! Hey!” another voice called out. I turned to look. It was the skinny Pakistani motel clerk. “What you idiots doing?” He wore a pair of flannel long johns and burgundy house slippers.
“Uh. Nothin’” I said. “I’ve got this situation under control.”
BLAM!
I jerked.
“Control, shit!” he yelled. “You get the hell off of my business! Take Mr. Rambo wit you!”
“Now hold on!” I held up my finger in his face. He stopped.
I turned toward Hank in time to see him tossing down another shot of whiskey.
“Hank,” I said.
“Here,” he said, holding the gun out to me. I took two steps toward him and took it.
He set the whiskey bottle back down and grabbed another shell.
“Hey,” I said.
He reached and grabbed the gun, inserted the shell into the breech as I tried to pull it out of his grip.
“Hold on,” he said.
Clang! Another round was chambered.
“Oh no you don’t,” I said. I pulled back and away from him, but his right hand shot out and hit the trigger.
BLAM!
The rifle jerked in my hands. I almost lost it. My wrist would be sore for some time from the recoil and my ears had begun to ring.
“What’s that?” he asked. “Sixteen more, I think.”
The Pakistani was yelling behind me: “I already called the cops,” he said. “They come and take you crazy friend away.”
“That done it,” Hank said. He jumped up and grabbed the rifle out of my hands.
The Pakistani’s eyes went round and white. He turned and bolted.
Hank took two steps. I moved, fast. I grabbed him from behind and lifted him off the ground, which was no easy thing as he outweighed me by a good fifty pounds.
The rifle clattered to the pavement.
“What?” he yelled. “Let me down, Goddammit!”
I dropped him. He staggered and almost fell, but I caught him again.
The motel clerk was out in the highway. He stopped running suddenly, waved his arms and began pointing back our way. He became sort of red-tinged for a moment, then blue, and suddenly I knew what was coming.
Two police cars, the second following dangerously close on the h
eels of the first skewed into the parking lot in a cloud of dust and gravel, brilliant red and blue spears of light from the headache racks rotating and counter-rotating like some nightmares I have had.
There is one hard and fast rule about small Texas towns: the law is always not very far away.
“Shit,” I said.
“Alright, you two, what’s the big idea?”
It was a deputy sheriff. His uniform was a butternut color with dark brown epaulettes and pocket flaps and he wore a Stetson hat. Also, he had a gun in his hands in firing stance.
“Gun’s on the ground, Officer,” I said and put my hands in the air.
Hank looked at the deputy. He looked at me.
“What’d you do this time?” he asked me. “Why’re the cops here?”
I slowly put my hands down. The officer took in the rest of the scene: the rifle on the pavement at our feet, the box of shells twenty feet away on the running board of the Suburban, the almost-empty bottle of Jack Daniels next to it, and Hank’s condition.
“Okay,” he said to me. “Has he been shooting that thing?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Up into the air. A friend of his died recently and this was his version of a sendoff.”
“Twenty-one guns,” Hank said, then grabbed his stomach. “I don’t feel so good.”
The deputy from the second car walked over, picked up the deer rifle and put it inside his cruiser.
“Hey,” Hank said. “Tell ‘im to give dat back.”
“Let’s go,” the first deputy said. He was smiling. “And I thought it was going to be a quick shift-change.”
“Oh my God,” the voice said through the little speaker by the doorway. We were in the driveway tunnel under the courthouse. I’d forgotten what county we were in, but I didn’t want to ask just yet. Also, I was trying to think of which lawyer would be best to call.
I looked up to see a camera panning down toward us.
“Yeah,” Deputy L. Rice said. “Sheriff, this is our one man wake-up call.”
“Well, tell him to come right on in. And welcome.”
The door in front of us buzzed. Deputy Rice pulled the door open and motioned us inside.
I turned to look behind us. Julie and Dingo were in the Suburban parked behind the Sheriff’s patrol cars.
I shrugged at her. She shrugged back.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to wait too long. I hoped.
Hank was in a holding cell inside the jail. I gave the booking officer as much information as I could while I chatted with the County Sheriff. He’d identified himself as Randy Thornton, and had shaken my hand as if he was about to ask for my vote. Small town elected officials can’t usually afford to make people overly upset with them unless it’s unavoidable, and that extends even to prisoners under arrest. We were out-of-towners, however, so I was both surprised and pleased by the Sheriff’s demeanor.
“I’m glad you got that rifle out of his hands before my boys got there, Mr. Travis. No telling what could have happened otherwise.”
“He means what could have happened to Mr. Sterling,” Deputy Rice said. “But I’ve never had to shoot anybody yet. Knock on wood.”
The three of us there-the booking officer, Deputy Rice, Sheriff Thornton, and myself-all started at the sudden WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! sound that came from the holding tank.
“Let me OUTTA HERE! You HEAR ME!” Hank’s muffled voice reverberated off of concrete and steel.
“Your friend,” Sheriff Thornton began, “is a hell-raiser. A bit old for that, ain’t he?”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
My eyes detected movement from upwards and to my right. On one of the closed-circuit surveillance monitors there was someone walking up to the back door of the jail. Someone familiar.
“I’ll be dipped,” I said.
It was Agent Cranford. In the camera lens-distorted background behind him I could make out Agent Bruce standing by the Suburban talking with Julie.
“Better let him in,” I said, just as the buzzer went off.
“Who is he?” Sheriff Thornton asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I said.
“Sheriff, if you’ll let these fellows go, I’ll be responsible for them.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” he said.
We were in a small conference room off the booking room. In the corner was an old fingerprint roller and a leaning stack of ancient parking meters. The quest for space is an ever-present problem for small town governments. The room was concrete cinder-block covered with lime-green paint. It gave our faces a sickly pallor. Then again, I wasn’t feeling so good myself. I could have used some breakfast to go with the cup of coffee I had in my hand.
“I just like to know what’s going on in my county,” Sheriff Thornton finished.
“Sheriff,” Cranford said. “First, I need to know something. Don’t take this the wrong way, alright?”
“Shoot.”
“Are you a close friend or relation to Archibald Carpin?”
Sheriff Thornton laughed. I looked at Cranford. He was a little too seasoned to take offense. He waited for the laughter to subside.
“What’s so funny?” he asked
“Heh! Nope,” Sheriff Thornton chuckled. I’m not remotely related to that coke-snortin’, rum runnin’ fool. No sir. You and Mr. Travis and that aging hell-raiser in my drunk tank in there come to my county to do something about that idiot?”
Agent Cranford looked at me. “As far as I can tell,” he said, “Mr. Travis, Ms. Simmons and Mr. Sterling are here because of a little girl named Jessica. And because of two million dollars.”
My heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t mentioned anything about the money before.
“Is he serious?” Thornton asked me and rubbed his rough-hewn, meaty hands together.
“Like a heart attack,” I said.
“Okay. That explains them,” he said. “What about you?” He pointed his finger at Cranford. “Why are you here?”
“My partner and I are here to shut down a certain moonshine operation that has been going on in this county since the late 1920s.”
“Oh. That.” He yawned. “Every few years a couple of fellows like you come through here. They go out there, look the place over. Then they leave.
“Yep,” Cranford said. “I know. I’ve read and re-read the files. But-” he pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket and handed it to Thornton. Thornton looked it over and handed it to me. I scanned over it quickly. There were three columns. The first column heading was ‘Date’, and underneath it was a long list of dates from 1930 to four years ago. The second column was a list of offenses, most of them the same thing: “ULUT alcohol transport”.
“What’s ULUT?” I asked.
“Unlicensed, untaxed.”
The third column was numbers. Dollar amounts.
“Those are just the ones we’ve interdicted-caught,” Cranford said.
I did some quick math. The total was millions of dollars.
“This case,” Cranford said. “It’s my last hurrah. I retire in two months.”
“So where does the wrecking crew here come into play?” Sheriff Thornton asked and gestured towards me.
“Our government cannot run without the assistance of its people.”
“What the hell kind of an answer is that?”
“The only one I have to give, right now.”
“All right. All right.” Sheriff Thornton stood up. He leaned across the table as Agent Cranford and I stood up. He shook both our hands.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
“Please,” he said. “Get that crazy, gun-toting alcoholic out of my jail.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Agent Cranford followed us back to the motel. Julie and I helped a snoring Hank out of the car and into his room. Dingo followed us in.
Hank needed a bath. I wasn’t his Momma, so I decided to wait and see if she showed up to bathe him. He was a friend, but I hadn’t signed up for that job yet.
“
You two go get some breakfast,” Cranford said when I came out of Hank’s room. “I’ll stay here until you get back.”
“Uh. Thanks,” I said.
Julie waited until we were in the Suburban headed out of the parking lot before asking me: “Why do you trust those guys?”
“They sprung Hank out of jail.”
“Yeah, but what’s their angle?”
“I wish I knew.”
We had a late breakfast-that was more of a lunch than anything-at a Mexican Restaurant. The food was pretty good, but not as good as the Austin venues I was used to.
When we got back to the motel, Hank was still zonked.
Cranford and Bruce waved and drove away as soon as we unlocked our door.
“You’re right,” I said to Julie. “They’re pretty weird. Nice, but weird.”
Julie and I passed the rest of the day in each other’s company.
I kept expecting Hank to wake up. I kept expecting the phone to ring. I kept a watch out for light blue Ford F-150 pick-up trucks.
Night time.
We were back inside the hotel room, in the same bed. In the dark with her body pressed against mine, it was like we’d never left the room from the night before. The events of that day hadn’t even happened. We did things in the night that young people do in the back seats of their parents’ cars.
Afterwards, I went outside and smoked one of her cigarettes. At one time in my life I smoked only when I had a beer in my other hand, so this was new for me. Julie had been craving a cigarette for the last several days. She’d gotten some when we had stopped for lunch.Maybe I wouldn’t turn it into another bad habit. Like sleeping with my clients, for instance.
A white, late model Ford sedan pulled up next to the Suburban. A lone figure emerged under the bright orange-ish light.
Agent Cranford.
I waited for him.
I’d forgotten to give the Suburban a thorough going-over and remove the GPS bug that had been planted there.
The North Texas night was cooler than the previous one. The door behind me was open just a crack. Julie was in there in the dark, snoring softly.