Soil

by Jamie Kornegay

  While preparing to leave, he heard a pistol shot across the river. He shushed the dog and listened to the sound of whining engines and raucous cheers in the distance. He stopped and felt their strange vibrations and knew it must be the mudders.

  Jay followed the din down the driveway to the road and along the shoulder toward the washed-out bridge. He saw the faint corona of light over the tree line and felt the buzz of humanity across the river.

  As he crossed the Tockawah, an ominous train of vehicles appeared in the distance, bearing down on him. He turned and ran, dove into a stand of rotten cane by the roadside and cowered there, watching them come, off-road by custom by sport utility by Jeep. Their faces through the glazed windshields were a drunken hodgepodge of antic fear, excitement and uncertainty, and they came a hundred strong.

  This had the makings of an exodus. He wanted to press on, to witness what brand of upheaval had conquered their sacred mud sport, but something told him to go home. Whatever had made them abandon their revelry was moving this way.

  He stayed up the entire night waiting until first light fell gray. A thick coating of fog was pulled over the world. He took the dog and stood at the bottom of the driveway in the empty expanse. They walked the middle of the road, across the bridge to Bobby Waterman’s place, from where it appeared the riders had emerged. Their double-stripe mud tracks painted the road and left a trail of clods, which led down a gravel turnrow into Waterman’s field, splaying out in a hundred directions with the attending footprints, all leading to a series of large ruts like jagged ditches cut across the rows of spoiled beans. Jay knew the farmer Waterman, had worked with him through the agency, and was surprised he had agreed to mud races on his land. He was a sober businessman and a disciple of the industrial model. He didn’t have a house here, which may be one reason he’d accepted the mudders’ deal. He must have opted to get any money he could from this wasted crop.

  Jay and Chipper walked through the tillage and inspected the portable light towers and then heard a rumbling engine and the slow crunch of tires. Jay turned to see a faint pair of headlights coming off the foggy ridge into the bottom. It was the deputy’s Mustang. He took off in a wide-legged scramble, as far as he could manage through the dense mud, whistling for the dog to follow. They ran for cover in a field of gray cornstalks spilling over with mildewed ears. They stopped and Jay strained to see through the wisps of fog. He could just make out the headlights and heard a voice calling out, “Hello!”

  Chipper barked a reply.

  “Shut up!” Jay hissed. Chipper barked again.

  He snatched the dog and ran deep into the hinter field, making clumsy tracks through virgin mire, flushing out morning quail feasting in the quiet furrows. They scuttled through the woods and plunged into the Tockawah, swam back across to his side of the river. Between the fog and the trees, the deputy would not have recognized them, but it wouldn’t require many guesses as to who would be wandering the bottoms on foot. Jay fully expected Shoals to show up at his place next.

  At the house he scrubbed the mud from his legs and boots and the dog’s fur. They tumbled inside and dried off. Chipper ran from window to window, growling and whimpering. If the deputy came, he would be looking for a dog. Jay fetched the duct tape, told Chipper, “I’m sorry, pal,” and wrapped several layers around the dog’s snout, leaving his nostrils free to breathe. He put the dog in the cellar and covered his ears from the whimpers and feet scratching against the door.

  There was nothing to do but wait. He convinced himself they were establishing a perimeter, biding their time to ambush. He fully expected the SWAT teams and television vans at the foot of the drive, shooters in the woods, teams rappelling out of helicopters. Of course, if it was just the county involved, it would be a more modest affair, maybe an old-fashioned stand-off. They’d sit out front for days and finally smoke him out, some old bow hunter flinging a fiery arrow into his attic. He prepared his weapons, stashed them around the house in a handy configuration.

  What probable cause did they have? He’d scoured the property foot by foot. He’d shoveled every square inch of tainted ground, even burned the hillside to eliminate all traces. They had nothing on him but speculation.

  It was midmorning before the deputy showed up. Jay walked out wearing only sweatpants like he’d just woken up.

  “Morning,” Shoals said.

  “Good morning, Deputy, what can I do for you?”

  The deputy scrutinized the scorched hillside. He looked a touch hung-over. “What happened to your yard?”

  “I was burning leaves and it got away from me.”

  The deputy queered his eyes in a skeptical glare, looked him up and down in half-dress. Jay noticed a blond Lab panting in the backseat. He wondered if the animal would sense that Chipper was locked up and muzzled inside.

  “We found a hand over on the other side of the river last night. It may belong to our missing Ohio boy,” said Shoals. “We’re gonna check your land this morning, me and some searchers. See if we can’t turn up anything else.”

  Jay hadn’t anticipated this staggering news but managed not to flinch.

  “That good with you?” the deputy asked.

  They wouldn’t find anything. Jay knew because he’d walked every inch himself, the field riddled with his footprints, like a battlefield on which an army of size elevens had skirmished. But what if he’d missed something? Besides, didn’t this kind of search require a warrant? To refuse, he thought, would be the worst sort of incrimination.

  “I dropped a pocketknife and walked the whole property just last week,” Jay said. “Didn’t see a thing. If that helps . . .”

  “Not really,” Shoals said. “I have to satisfy my own curiosity.”

  Jay shrugged. He felt confident that he’d covered all his bases, but the idea of them canvassing his property unnerved him deeply. Better to give them a cursory inspection, maybe even let them contaminate the site than have them come back with metal detectors and crime scene specialists.

  “Then do your job,” Jay replied. He’d said it by way of invitation, but the deputy bristled, hearing a challenge in his remark.

  “That’s what I intend to do,” he said curtly.

  “It’s cool. I’ll lend you a hand.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” Shoals said. “Lend me a hand? This is a human being we’re talking about.”

  Jay winced. “Of course. There was no pun intended.”

  “Well . . . pun taken,” the deputy said.

  “Sorry, just let me get dressed and I’ll join you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Shoals said. “This aint skip-to-my-lou. There’s a trained method to it.”

  “I understand,” said Jay, his voice mellowing, seeking favor. “I can follow directions. I’d just be interested to see y’all work.”

  His ego tickled, the deputy reluctantly agreed and told him to meet them down in the front field.

  Jay walked inside feeling like he’d run a mile, his heart thumping, sweat streaming. They know, he thought. They know that I know.

  He put on a flannel shirt that covered the .38 Special tucked into his waistband. If they trumped up some evidence and tried to take him in, he’d have at least six chances to get away. The yellow Lab made him nervous. He’d taken precautions against animal searches, hence the burned yard, but he wasn’t certain he could match wits with a properly trained animal. What if the dog zeroed in on the spot where the dead man had lain? How far was he willing to play this gambit?

  He walked down the driveway and was surprised to see nearly a dozen people gathered in his field near the road. Cars were lined up along the roadside and in the driveway as if it were a party. There was at least one deputy squad car, but mostly unmarked vehicles, including a familiar mud-streaked racing truck. Who were these people? Possibly a few wives and girlfriends. A couple of nonpolice types who could hav
e been friends, relatives, or groupies drawn to the thrill of the hunt but unhirable for any of various reasons. Jay recognized the hotheaded mudder Hutch, who had paid him a visit last week, along with a couple of his buddies. Clearly they were in league with Shoals, just as Jay had suspected. So far he’d been right about everything. He still knew more than they did. If he could keep his cool, he might pass this inspection.

  Shoals took charge. He passed out wooden stakes and metal pins with orange flags attached. The Lab was his hunting dog, Suzie-Q, and Jay guessed right away she probably couldn’t even fetch ducks, much less scout cadavers.

  Shoals retrieved a black plastic bag, unsealed it, and held it to Suzie-Q’s nose. She squirmed and snapped, no doubt hoping for a retrieving game. Shoals sealed the bag, which must have contained the hand, and patted her flank.

  “Is that it?” Jay called to the deputy. He wanted to get a look, to try and match it with the body, maybe see the half-finger, but Shoals ignored him, tucking the goods away and calling his search party to order.

  “Okay, everybody line up side to side!” the deputy yelled. He handed Jay three stakes and flags and pointed to the others.

  “Newton and Bissell, y’all are gonna be the anchors. I wanna take this nice and slow. Everybody spread out to an arm’s length. We’re gonna march forward. You’ve got your sticks if you need to move anything, but don’t touch with your bare hands. Keep your eyes down and in front. You see anything suspicious, tag it and holler. Anything at all out of the ordinary, I wanna know. Once we make it to the end of the field, we’ll shift down and go the other direction. Everybody clear?”

  It was a leisurely hunt. Jokes were traded, insults cast. One or two carried beers in their jackets. Shoals let the dog run free, sniffing and peeing all across the field and along the edges, a curious nuisance with no sense of mission. Jay kept one eye on her and one on the ground. A silly woman at the end wearing expensive sunglasses and a ski vest flagged a bloated gray hand-shaped object, and Shoals hurried over to proclaim it a dead toad.

  There seemed to be more interest among search party members in the state of Jay’s field, the motivations and efficacy of his unconventional farming tactics, than in actually finding any clues to the missing person. Their ignorant comments about his beds and implements rankled him, and he grew testy.

  “What the hell is this?” asked one zit-faced young deputy, swatting the eight-foot-high mud stack with his stake.

  “Well, it was a ziggurat,” Jay said.

  “A zigger what?”

  “You know, a ziggurat. Modeled on the ancient Sumerian temples? Precursor to the pyramid?”

  An awkward silence descended.

  “It was an experiment for small-space gardening, like a cramped backyard or indoor terrarium. It’s plumbed and everything. Had a rain catch on top, but I don’t know where that went.”

  “Rain must’ve caught it,” another searcher said, and the others snickered.

  They complained about having to climb over the slippery railroad ties that divided his raised beds and made tasteless jokes after his watermelon trees. They poked fun at his gunked-up tractor and his piecemeal greenhouse. He considered asking them all to leave. “Come back when you have a warrant and half a clue,” he wanted to say. He was playing nice, letting them all tramp back and forth across his field, searching for something they’d never find. Shoals was way out of line. If Jay insisted on a warrant, the deputy would probably roust a judge out of his duck blind and bring one for spite. Anything beyond total acquiescence at this point just raised suspicion.

  “Hey, Danny, I didn’t know your dog knew yoga!” cracked one searcher.

  Everyone turned to see Suzie-Q in the middle of the field, bowed up in a mystical hunch, her legs achieving a wide and perfect parabola. A cigar-­shaped turd emerged beneath her erect tail.

  “Hey, is that a finger?” cried another.

  “Real funny,” Shoals replied. “Suzie, back on point!”

  The dog finished by rocking on her haunches, her tail bobbing up and down with a graceful wave like an eagle’s wing. One smart-ass broke ranks and staked a pin in the droppings.

  The charade went on for an hour or so, and Jay grew more impatient by the minute. He sighed and straightened a collapsed beanpole tepee one of the searchers had knocked askew. When at last he turned to Shoals to complain, the deputy drew a .44 from his vest.

  “Step aside,” he told Jay, raising the weapon, staring straight through him.

  Jay took a leap back as Shoals let sail a thunderous volley into the field. He turned to follow the deputy’s aim, and his heart nearly leapt from his chest.

  There, in the precise spot where he’d recovered the body, sat the turkey buzzard pecking at the ground. Suzie-Q made a beeline for the bird.

  Shoals sighted the buzzard, a good eighty yards away, its expanded wings giving him a wide target, and fired a second shot. He might have nicked it, but it was hard to tell. The bird shrieked and climbed into the air with lazy loft. The deputy sent another round into the sky but hit nothing.

  The crowd of searchers gave Shoals hell for his aim. “I was trying to scare it off,” he said.

  “At least you didn’t hit the dog!” someone said.

  The deputy frowned. He looked at Jay and seemed to channel his anger at the farmer. “I wonder what that bastard was hunting,” Shoals said.

  Jay shrugged.

  “When we’re done in this field, what do you reckon we’d find back in that pasture or along the river there?”

  “I have no idea,” Jay replied. “The water didn’t get into the pasture.”

  “Who said this is contained to the waterline?” asked Shoals. “What makes you think some dog didn’t carry it off into the pasture?”

  “Carry what off?”

  The deputy stopped. Did he even know what he was looking for? “You seen any strange dogs around here?”

  “Yeah,” said Jay. “They’re running loose all over the county.”

  “You shot any?”

  “Hell no!” he cried.

  “Where’s your dog?”

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “You don’t have a dog?”

  “No.”

  “There’s never been a dog out here?”

  “What are you getting at, Deputy?”

  “I’m just asking if you ever had a dog. There’s a lot of tracks out here that aint all Suzie’s.”

  “My son had a dog. But he doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Your son or your son’s dog?”

  “Neither!”

  “Where’s your son’s dog then?”

  “I thought we were looking for a hand, Deputy. Do I need my lawyer present?”

  “That depends. Who’s your lawyer?”

  This is it, Jay thought. He felt the cold steel against his lower back. Or he could just make them all leave, buy some time to get packed up and hightail it out of there.

  “Hey, Danny!” the younger deputy called.

  A commotion arose from the back of the field. Everyone turned to see what had been found. One of the searchers was running after Suzie-Q, who had her nose in the black plastic bag. She snatched the hand and ran off with it before collapsing in a mudhole and gnawing it like a ham bone. Shoals ran over to scold her, and the dog took it for a game of chase. After a lap around the field, they finally wrestled her onto her leash, and the deputy deposited the chewed hand back in its plastic home.

  “Game over!” Shoals cried. “We’re done here.”

  He sent Jay a long suspicious stare, tiny white flags in his eyes. Jay felt a certain flush of confidence. He’d overestimated this hick deputy, and now he had the upper hand. More than ever, he believed he could get away with this.

  PART

  V

  Leavenger pumped a shell into the breech and he
ld one in the chamber and then slung the shotgun over his shoulder. He smeared on face paint with jittery fingers, slipped into his bowling gloves, and grabbed the crutches from the truck bed. “It’s on,” he told the photo of his girl Virginia, dangling from the rearview mirror.

  Dressed every inch in camouflage, the woodsman left the truck parked in the highest grass he could find. It couldn’t be seen from twenty yards away. The light had gone to putty, and the wind passed through the oak and cypress.

  He was fast on the crutches now. A bit of his former upper-body strength had come back with the hindered mobility and his ravenous appetite for protein. He was bronze and shallower. The hunter in him had been called out of retirement. He moved like a limping puma down into the thicket. The clay and silt had firmed considerably since his last pass, and he was able to maneuver easily through the toppled saplings and rotten timber. The floor was riddled with the footprints of scavengers, some intimidating. Were there still bear lurking around this old bottom?

  He came to a swamp just as the last blur of sun left the trees. He feared being eaten alive in the night and wanted to pass through quickly and camp on the high bank. He traversed dry sandbars until his crutches began to sink, and then he flung himself into a tree. He let the crutches hang on his shoulders and tried to monkey across, but he gave out midway. He would have to make a bed in the branches and hope the mosquitoes didn’t devour him by morning.

  He had watched an Aussie special-ops guy on TV and knew how to make a bed in awkward quarters. But even as a seasoned woodsman, he clutched the branches and held on for dear life at the noises of the midnight swamp. Was it a beaver, a gator, a possum, snakes, the swamp witch? He flinched and dropped his flask in the murk, didn’t sleep a dash, and when the night finally expired, the daylight rose to shame him. He was in a dip about the size of a little league baseball field. He dropped gingerly into the black water and searched beneath the water for his flask. When he found it, the contents had swirled with swamp juice, but he was in desperate need of spirits and dared a sip. He waded out cupping his nuts, so prone was he to leeches.