Murder on the Red River

by Marcie R. Rendon

  At dusk the farmers started to drift in, shaking the chaff out of their duckbill hats and bringing in the smell of field dust with them. Quarters were dropped in the jukebox, country twang mixed in with the Minnesota Scandinavian brogue.

  Cash toned down her game, won some, lost some. She was drinking slow, waiting for the right time to mosey across the street to Arnie’s. She figured if the two men came back into town, they would go on over there to drink. She planned to hang around until they showed again, trusting the cold chill that ran up her back and the young kids’ intuition about cleaning up clues left behind.

  When the ten o’clock news came on, Cash watched while the body bags were counted and the protest marches covered, then she went out the side door of Mickey’s to grab the extra pack of cigarettes she’d thrown in the glove box earlier in the day when she had stopped for gas.

  She heard an engine running and when she looked down the block to see who it was, she heard footsteps coming up behind her. Before she could turn around, her arms were grabbed from behind, elbows pulled together, and a rope quickly wrapped around her wrists before a gunnysack reaching almost to her knees was pulled over her head. The dank smell of potatoes gagged her as she was swung headfirst over a man’s shoulders. Then she was dumped in the bed of a pickup truck that had its engine running.

  The passenger side door slammed shut and the pickup jerked back out of its parking spot and whipped around the corner. Cash rolled and crashed into one side of the pickup bed and then the other.

  When the pickup made another sharp right turn and the road turned to gravel, Cash knew in her mind where she was going. These guys were bound and determined to clean up loose ends, get rid of all clues. Somehow they knew she was one of the clues and she still didn’t know these jokers’ names.

  Cash spit burlap fiber out of her mouth. She was trying to breathe through her mouth because the foul smell of rotten potatoes kept gagging her, but every time she opened her mouth she got field dust or burlap fiber in her mouth. The pickup slowed and took another turn, this time to the left onto a dirt road. Cash could hear the grass that grew in the middle of the tire tracks scrape against the undercarriage of the pickup. About right now they were driving past the spot where they had dumped Tony O’s body. Up ahead were abandoned migrant shacks.

  Cash found a way to tuck her body into the bed of the truck against the wheel well so she wasn’t getting thrown around quite as much. The advantage she had, she hoped—now that she could think some without getting tossed and thrown in the back of the truck—is that she knew this part of the river. She and Wheaton fished here occasionally and even though she didn’t trap gophers anymore, she used to, right along this stretch too. And when she wanted to get away from Fargo—the city lights, the drinking and pool sharking, Jim—when she wanted to get away from it all, she would come down here and walk the riverbank or just sit and listen to the mosquitoes hum, the bullfrogs talk to their lady frog friends and watch the fireflies fly.

  The truck made a left turn, hit a bump. Cash lost her tuck-in spot as her body was lifted on the bed of the truck and smacked down like a belly flop, but on metal not water. And then the truck stopped. Cash initially felt panic, fear that this is how her life would end, shot in the head and left to rot in a burlap bag meant for potatoes. Fear that she would never have children like Josie Day Dodge had, that she would never get to ask Wheaton about her mom. Or her dad for that matter. Questions she had avoided her whole life. Cash felt cold sweat pool in the middle of her lower back and the muscles of her arms start to shake with fear. Then she was pulled by her feet to the end of the pickup truck, hauled out and tossed again over a man’s shoulder.

  She was tempted to pee her pants just to make him mad, but he hadn’t shot her yet and fool that she was, she didn’t want them to speed up the process. “Open that door for me,” the guy carrying her said to his partner. Cash knew then they were going into one of the abandoned migrant shacks.

  The next thing she knew she was dumped on the wire bedspring of a bed. The creaking of the springs scared her. She had a momentary flashback of her mom or someone having sex with someone. Don’t think that thought, she thought. She was and always had been a firm believer in one of the sayings of the elders, “Be careful what you think. Your thoughts are powerful. They can create reality.” And so she shut off the flashback and counted the bullets left in the box under the front seat of her truck sitting back outside Mickey’s.

  She was at thirteen, individually visualizing the .22 caliber marker on each brass bullet when a large hand pushed her shoulder. The man who spoke was the man who had sat in the passenger seat the night they had mistaken her for a bear.

  “You think you’re slick, huh, girl? Think you’re living back in the Old West? A scout maybe? Thinking you can track the outlaws like Tonto? Geronimo?” He shoved her shoulder again. The man who had been drunk that night and first mistook her for a bear laughed.

  “Had me fooled.” He laughed, almost a giggle. “Too bad we didn’t shoot you that night.”

  “Shuttup,” said his partner. “If you hadn’t been so damn drunk, you would have been able to tell the difference between a damn Indian and a bear.” He sat on the end of the bed, making the springs creak. Cash started counting bullets again.

  “After we saw you down in the ditch there, we checked the gopher holes. I don’t know how you trap a gopher with no trap. Got me thinking, though, maybe it wasn’t a bear my idiot buddy here saw the other night. So we drove down to where we were parked the other night. Walked on back down to the river.”

  “He found that cow trail you must have been running along,” said the giggler. Cash could understand why his partner was upset with him. Just the sound of his voice was annoying as hell. The guy sitting on the bed would have been better off shooting him instead of all the other people he was doing away with.

  It was then she smelled the acrid smoke. He was smoking more than cigarettes. No wonder he was giggling. So really, Cash figured, she only had one idiot to deal with.

  This was the second time in a week she had been nabbed and caught by surprise. First the Day Dodge kids, now these jokers. If she got out of this alive, she was going to find a judo club and take some lessons.

  “Put that shit out,” said the leader.

  “Alright, alright, Dick. Remember when that guy at the bar said, ‘Open the door for me, Richard, don’t shut the door on me Dick.’” And the giggler burst out laughing. After the bedsprings creaked, the next sound Cash heard was a thunk and a thud, the sound of someone getting slugged and hitting the floor.

  “Shuttup, asshole. I’ll shoot your ass. Now she knows my fucking name.” Cash heard the sound of a foot connecting with a body.

  “Ah, man, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Don’t shoot, come on, man. I’ll throw her in the river.” Cash felt the bed frame bend as he used the metal bar to pull himself back up to standing. She felt him grabbing at her legs.

  “We aren’t going to throw her in the river here,” Dick said. Cash heard the giggler hit the thin wall of the shack. Dick must have pushed him away. “Sit down over there and let me think,” he said. “I was thinking we’d shoot her, but put her body in the back end of the truck under a tarp. Once we cross the border, we throw her in the river. We’ve already left two bodies here. She figured out who we are, that cop Wheaton that she’s always hanging around with is going to be on to us soon too.”

  Cash kept quiet, listening to the two men talk, trying to determine what her chances were of getting out of this situation alive. She sure as hell wasn’t planning on getting drowned like a feral cat in a gunnysack, a common practice among the farmers. The cats invariably overbred. The farmers tied up the litters in a gunnysack and dumped them off a bridge into the river.

  “He was in the bar asking about who folks thought killed them two. He even asked you. He’s not on to us,” said the giggler, calmer now that his high had been slapped out of him. “Maybe she’s already dead. Hasn’t moved or said a
word since we dumped her on that bed there.”

  Cash felt a hard slap on her ass. “You alive in there?” Dick asked loudly. He slapped her again. This time she tried to kick his hand away.

  He grabbed her calf. “There we go. We were just checking. See how much of this job we still have to do. Can you talk?”

  “I can’t breathe inside this bag,” said Cash.

  The dumb one giggled. “You won’t have to worry about that too much longer.” Cash heard him get whacked again.

  They took the bag off her. Her eyes had to adjust to the dim light of an old kerosene lamp the guys had sitting in the middle of the floor. Cash took her time looking at the two men.

  Dick was close to five eleven, about two hundred pounds, thick shoulders from doing farm labor. He was wearing jeans and a flannel work shirt, the dirty neckline of what used to be a white undershirt covered his neck front where his shirt was unbuttoned. Instead of the Red Wing work boots that most guys wore, he had on scuffed black lace-up leather boots. Dirty blond hair, a bit longer than most of the farmers around the Red River Valley. She was surprised to see a gold wedding band on his left ring finger.

  The giggler, whose name she still hadn’t heard, was much shorter and thinner. Five foot five at the most and weighing in as a welterweight, not more than one hundred forty-five anyways. He had on a thin cotton long-sleeved shirt. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows so you could see the waffle-print on the sleeves of the long underwear he was wearing. He too was wearing scuffed black leather boots with the metal hooks near the top to loop the laces around. His laces were wrapped a couple times around the top of the boots. No wedding ring. In the dim light thrown by the kerosene lamp, she couldn’t tell if his hair was dark brown or black. He had a weasel-looking face, which had made him look scary in daylight but the dope he had been smoking just made him look like—a dope.

  Cash’s cheek hurt where it was pressed into the wire springs. She scooted her legs over to the edge of the bed and pushed herself up to a seated position. Dick put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going?” he growled.

  “Nowhere.”

  “What were you doing the other night spying on us?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play dumb. We know it was you running through the woods the other night.”

  “Sure, that was me, but I was just camped out down here. When your friend shouted he’d seen a bear, I got scared and took off running. You all were gonna shoot me without even knowing what or who I was.”

  “Come on, John saw you in the bar, then you were out here. Now today you were nosing around in the ditch. You’d be as dead as John already, but we need to know how much that county sheriff knows.”

  “What do you mean, knows? I don’t know what he knows.”

  Dick pushed her back on the bed, “Don’t bullshit. Everyone in town says you’re his little pet.”

  Cash was trying desperately to think her way out of this. She lay still, trying to gather her thoughts. Her fingers fiddled with the rope ends that had her wrists tied behind her back. It was actually looser than what she had thought back when she was being thrown around in the back of the truck. It was worth a try to hook the knot on one of the bedsprings and attempt to loosen it. They hadn’t killed her right away and now Cash was confident she was going to live. It was just a question of what it was going to take to get out of here alive.

  She had one foster mother who would preach, Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Those words gave her encouragement right then. As she worked the knot on the springs she assessed her situation.

  She had no doubt she could take the welterweight in a fight. For one, he was stoned, slow-moving. It was the big guy she had to worry about. But these were not smart men. Neither of them had a weapon though Dick kept threatening to shoot her or his partner. Which meant they probably had a rifle out in the cab of the truck. The door to the shack was on cheap hinges and only closed with a wire spring, which meant there wasn’t a door handle she had to worry about turning. If she ever got free, she could just hit the door running.

  The stoned, weasel-face guy had been sitting on the floor since the last time Dick had whacked him. He pushed himself up and started to walk towards the door, the lamplight casting a long wobbly shadow as he walked.

  “Where the hell you going?”

  “Gotta see a man about a horse.”

  “Christ.”

  “What? A man can’t take a piss when he needs to?”

  “Shuttup.”

  Weasel Face let the door slam behind him. Cash and Dick heard a muffled giggle. “Don’t slam the door on me Dick,” he said, followed by the sound of liquid hitting the ground on the west side of the shack.

  Right at that moment, they heard tires on gravel down at the road crossing. Headlights beamed in their direction. Dick put his meaty paw over Cash’s mouth. Weasel Face stopped pissing mid-stream. “Dick, Dick!” he whispered loudly, “someone’s coming.”

  “Keep your ass out there,” Dick whispered back. “They can’t see you on that side of the shack. And keep your damn mouth shut.” He kept his hand over Cash’s mouth.

  Cash kept working the knot on the bedsprings. The headlights coming towards them turned off. The engine stopped. Country music drifted across the night air. Cash heard a girl’s laugh. Must be a couple coming here to make out.

  She could hear the Weasel creeping around the outside of the shack. He must be trying to get a look at who had driven up.

  “Psst, Dick. Psst.”

  “What, you idiot?” Dick’s whisper was a growl.

  “It’s a couple parking. They’re making out like crazy.”

  “Shuttup and stay out of sight.”

  Cash felt the knot loosen. She shifted her hips as if she were trying to get more comfortable on the springs, at the same time slipping her right hand loose from the rope. When she moved, Dick clamped harder on her mouth.

  “Dick!”

  “I said shuttup!

  “I gotta tell you something.”

  “For Christ’s sake, what?”

  “I can see light through the cracks of the shack.”

  “What?!”

  “I can see light through the cracks of the shack. They know we’re down here. If they come down here to see who we are, they’re going to be able to see our faces. Maybe you should put that lamp out.”

  Goddamnit to hell, thought Cash. Why the hell did he have to make an intelligent observation at this point?

  “I’ll put it out,” whispered Dick. “If you make a sound, I’ll kill you with my bare hands,” he threatened Cash. She shook her head in agreement, signaling she would stay quiet. He took his hand away and then started to stand up to reach the lamp to put it out. Cash grabbed his belt and pulled him back onto the bed as hard as she could. Shit, he was heavy. He hit the bed with a thud, the old metal frame crashing to the floor, with Cash underneath him. Oh good lord, he was heavy.

  “Get the fucking gun!” Dick yelled. Rolling off Cash as fast as his weight would allow, but still on the floor with Cash where the bed had crashed down, he went to grab her upper arms but in the rush only grabbed her jacket sleeves. Cash played dead. She flopped limply as he jerked her towards him, he with his knees on either side of her on the floor trying to gain control. Cash heard the pickup door slam right outside the shack. In that same instant, the headlights of the vehicle down the road were turned on.

  “Bitch!” screamed Dick as he attempted to slap her alongside the head. Cash, who was close enough to feel his arm muscles tighten had anticipated it and flopped her head so his palm grazed the top of her head. Short as she was, lying between his larger frame, she realized her knees were in the proximity of his crotch. From that dead limp state, feet still tied together, using all the adrenaline pumping through her body, she kneed Dick in the groin as hard as she could. Dick collapsed on her. He screamed, a deep guttural sound, as he rolled off her, his hands grabbing his crotch.
She ripped her jean jacket off and wrapped and tied it over his face, pulling the sleeves and knotting them as fast and as tight as she could.

  “They’re coming, Dick! What should I do?” hollered the Weasel.

  Cash fumbled with the knot at her ankles as Dick rolled in agony on the fallen bed. She elbowed him in the head as hard as she could to buy herself some more time. She got one foot free, grabbed the lit kerosene lamp and threw it on Dick.

  Like she had planned, she hit the door running and kept right on. Behind her she heard indiscernible yells and screams. She looked back as she hit the tree line. She saw Dick run out of the shack, flames lapping up his left side. He dropped and rolled across the field. The shack was going up in flames and Weasel Face was shooting at the car that had come down the road. The car made a U-turn down into the shallow ditch and back up on the road. Cash heard the gravel spit even as she ran, lungs burning, stumbling across dead branches and tree roots until she felt the cow path underfoot.

  Her braid whipped against her back. She reached and grabbed it over her shoulder, tucked it into her jeans in front. She didn’t want to get slowed down by it hooking on a tree branch. In the distance, she could hear Dick swearing and moaning. When she got to the fallen tree, she clambered over it just like she had the other night, but this time, rather than stopping to pee, she kept on running. She knew at the next bend of the river was the backside of the old county dump. That would put her by the gravel road about three and a half miles north of town. There were no trees along the road until you got to a couple farmsteads.

  She slowed to a fast walk, breathing hard, hand on her right side where she was getting a stitch. She heard Dick’s pickup truck start and the roll of its wheels over the dirt and grass road. She stopped to focus, listening. If she could trust her ears, the truck was moving away from her. Dick must be burned pretty bad if they were hightailing it to the county hospital in Ada and not stopping to look for her. She ran up the riverbank, pulling herself forward on saplings and river brush. By the time she got to the tree line, all she could see were the pickup taillights heading due east.