The Spy's Little Zonbi

by Cole Alpaugh

  But Leon caught enough to understand. School was tough on a kid so slow and stupid. It had meant arm punches, Indian burns, and ears flicked so hard they turned blood red and eventually stayed that way.

  “You see?” Clayton had said, turning his head sideways and showing off his ears. Boy had ears just like those wrestlers who didn’t wear head gear. Cauliflower ears, they called them, all lumpy and wrong looking.

  The noise out of Clayton didn’t bother Leon any more than when the knob came off the radio in truck six and for a solid three weeks he’d had to listen to some preacher yap about fire and hailstorms. For certain, it would be one perfectly shitty way for most people to start their day, but not so much for Leon. Nope, he just tuned it out like he’d tuned out his three ex-wives and he was good to go—no harm, no foul. Also, the boy never once asked to borrow a ten spot ’til payday, a major improvement over all the other bundle jockeys.

  Clayton had claimed the open road had been calling him ever since he was a little kid. He had dreams of finally passing the test for his Class A commercial license and buying his own big rig for cross country hauls.

  It was right before Clayton died and the two men were sitting on the loading dock waiting for a downpour to let up. The rain beat down like a fist and Leon was sour knowing the window was rolled down in his pickup.

  “You ever see that movie called Duel?” Clayton asked, but Leon said he hadn’t.

  “My daddy took me up to Dover when I was ’bout ten. Told me it was the only time he ever went inside a movie theater. Can you picture that?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Momma didn’t wanna go ’cause her eyes were all blacked up. I think she was just happy to be home alone for a while.”

  Leon remembered thinking how odd it was that the kid couldn’t find his way back across town and had to have someone else count his bundles when they got past twenty. But talking about his rotten old man somehow put focus into his scatter brain.

  “I never saw my daddy ever say goodbye to so much cold hard cash except at the Liquor Mart.” Clayton sat back with his arms stretched out behind. He lifted his legs into the rain until his jeans went dark.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I didn’t get no popcorn, but I was happy enough just smellin’ it. You like popcorn, Leon?”

  “I like it just fine,” Leon said, watching the purple thunderheads build over the western half of the city. His goddamn truck seat was gonna be drenched. Lucky his floorboards were rusted out so there wouldn’t be a pond.

  “Then came this big truck trying to run down a car. On the movie screen, I’m sayin’. The rig driver starts having a chase up and down the mountains with this asshole businessman. It was like when Danny flipped off that kid from the college for tailgating, then pulled over and got his ass whooped.”

  “Yeah, I recall.”

  “ ‘Git ’im,’ my daddy yells. And I watched how happy he was when the car starts overheating and losing distance on a steep hill. Daddy was cheering the rig drive on even with all these people telling him to shut his trap. That’s when I knew I was gonna be a driver. That was when I seen myself high up behind a big steering wheel, head rockin’ side to side with the bumps in the road. No teacher woulda dared call me stupid again, no sir. Jeb and Donny Brooks wouldn’t flick my ears no more. Daddy woulda loved me for real and not hit me no more.”

  “Dads can be hard on a boy.”

  “You know what my daddy said right there in the movie theater?”

  “Nope.”

  “He leaned over to me and whispered ‘That’s a Peterbilt Two-Eighty-One.’ I never heard my daddy whisper nothing in his whole life. And later on he whispered ‘Them’s snakeskin boots!’ ”

  “Uh huh.”

  They sat watching the rain and Leon was pretty sure the kid had lost his train of thought when he started up again.

  “The movie ended real bad when the rig went over the side of a mountain and crashed. But my daddy took it pretty good. He fired up one of them skinny cigars with the plastic tip and had Hank Williams turned up loud in the one good speaker. And he was laughin’ at me ’cause I had my own steering wheel in my hands. I was running through gears, mowin’ down every rotten kid who ever once pulled my ears.”

  “Sounds like a good time with your pa.”

  “You wanna know how I got to be a retard?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Back when I was a little baby, my daddy used the toilet to keep me quiet. Least that’s what my momma told me. Whenever I’d get howlin’ over something, he’d grab my ass up from wherever I was and head straight for the john. Momma said my head would get banged up along the way, but she said it was probably bein’ dunked under water that made me stupid.”

  “That’s a sorry thing to do to a baby.”

  But Leon knew it wasn’t the boy’s father who had eventually killed him. It wasn’t even the awful case of head lice that had practically driven Clayton crazy with the nonstop itching and burning, his scalp a moonscape of scabs and open sores.

  No, it was Leon who killed the dumb halfwit and on the slow drive to the cemetery in the lead truck he was riddled with guilt. Leon drove with manic tears streaming down his stubbly face, the body of the poor bastard boxed up not four feet behind him. Each small pothole made the untethered coffin jump and Leon was sure he could hear Clayton’s body making a second, echoing bump from inside. Leon didn’t have a mean bone in his body and was usually the one telling the other drivers to quit pickin’ on the nitwit.

  Leon wished he’d never become a driver in the first place. He wished he’d never met Clayton Butterfish and had never been put in a position where the kid trusted what he had to say. The middle-aged Leon was too lanky for being a driver in the first place. He should have listened to his aching back. He was always cracking an elbow or knobby knee climbing in and around the trucks. Now he was killing people.

  With an ever-present spattered painter’s cap and a thermos alternately filled with coffee or Southern Comfort, Leon would never work another day in his life if booze and fishing rods were free. The booze kept his bones from hurting, and he was drunk and clumsy enough to snap more rods than was really fair. And now he was a stone cold killer.

  As the procession crested the mid-span of the Wicomico River Bridge, Leon nearly lost the last bit of control. It was right down there on the bank where Clayton’s charred upper torso had been discovered by a young boy with a fishing pole and a brimming cup of night crawlers. Clayton had come down here by the water’s edge to carry out Leon’s suggestion to douse his skull in gasoline.

  “Yeah, Clayton, only way to get them buggers gone is with high test gasoline,” Leon had told him during a morning load up. “Just fill a bucket and give yourself a good dunk and you’re good to go.”

  Leon should have known the dumb-as-mud Butterfish was never without a stub of cigarette dangling from his chapped lips, the long glowing ash curling down, just looking to spark anything remotely flammable.

  Another bump and Leon let out a little scream, then promised to get the dead moron to his grave if it was the last thing he did on God’s green Earth.

  “Lord Jesus knows I got ya kilt,” Leon sobbed, the guilty waterworks just going and going. “But I’m gonna get you home, boy. Leon’s gonna get ya to the Promised Land, you poor dumb bastard.”

  ***

  Mack Butterfish twisted the restroom faucets hard, but water kept dripping. Why hadn’t his goddamn city editor reminded him in this morning’s meeting? There was gonna be heavy shit flying tomorrow morning, and some serious hell to pay. He’d put the fear of god into a couple of editors and a few lazy-ass reporters who couldn’t find City Hall unless someone there had just made a doughnut run. Get your butt canned from this place and see where you landed. There wasn’t much further down to go from here, except rags like that piece of shit cross-town weekly.

  Lord knew he caught his share from the publisher and the ad manager. Newspapers, run by people who only cared ab
out the bottom line, were dying a slow death. Editorial content came halfway down the list of priorities, just ahead of the assignment of parking spaces. In a recent meeting the ad manager had the balls to suggest his reps take over the spots nearest the employee entrance so they could get to their daily rounds on time. To hell with covering fires and car wrecks, let’s make sure his people max out their monthly commissions.

  Mack had considered punching the ad manager in the nose when he’d demanded he kill a story about the local Junior Chamber of Commerce president being charged with embezzlement because it would cast an ugly light on the entire downtown business community. Mack saw their publisher quietly nodding off across the table. But Mack was an expert when it came to knowing what kind of newspaper you landed at when you got your ass fired from a place like the Daily Times. He’d sat through the last twenty minutes of the meeting thinking about next Sunday’s fishing trip out of Pocomoke City.

  Butterfish punched the silver knob to dry his hands in hot air. He calmed down a little. It was always better to have someone else to blame. As he tucked in his shirt, he wondered how it had gotten so filthy. He hoped he’d left his tie draped over his office chair instead of inside the greasy printing machinery. His wife had taken pains to let him know she’d gone to the ends of the Earth to find the perfect sixtieth birthday gift. God knows a man’s life wasn’t complete without a closet full of striped ties. But if it was lost, then so be it. Just like the Post was going to have to live without a feature package and sunrise procession photos of his dead driver.

  Butterfish emerged from the men’s room feeling cool and collected, half of the chewing out speech to his city editor already written in his head. Calling the Post with an apology could wait an hour or two. Happy to kick the can down the road a bit, he decided to wait for them to call him.

  “You were asking about the photo internship, right?” Mack peeked beyond his new intern into his glass-walled office. His tie was nowhere to be seen.

  “I’m supposed to start today.” Chase had left the night editor’s desk and approached Butterfish like he was a strange dog who might bite. Mack liked being feared and the edge that came with it. Once the fear was gone, the bullshit had a way of creeping in and things didn’t get done on time.

  “Limp’s our chief photographer and he’ll show you the ropes. You’ll go out with him for a week and then you’re on your own. Work fast and keep people in focus. That’s all I need, nothing fancy.” Mack motioned for the kid to come with him. “There’s plenty of old gear to get you started.”

  The kid followed Butterfish to a locked closet outside the darkroom as he pawed through his ring of keys. He wondered if this kid would survive a summer of Limp’s nonsense. Before shoving the key into the lock, he took a good look at his new intern. You just never knew these days. When Mack had recruited spies, he looked for crew cuts and football player shoulders. This one looked like he was about to pick up a guitar and sing “Hey, Jude.” But he’d been wrong before. Maybe the kid would make the cut.

  Chapter 5

  A fat man in a thong became Chase’s mentor.

  Times Chief photographer Limp Shockley went out of his way to make people uncomfortable. One of the descriptions circulating the newsroom was that Limp could make a rabid timber wolf feel awkward and slink off to the other side of the ponderosa until the coast was clear. Limp mostly sported striped seersucker slacks with vivid thong panties he flashed at inappropriate moments. His recent marriage to an eighty-five-year-old woman forty years his senior seemed to provide a treasure trove of new material. He was quick to show off honeymoon snapshots to anyone brave enough or too slow to get away—images of Speedos, thongs, and horribly wrinkled skin.

  “Lord have mercy, you’re the spittin’ image of that sixties boy-band leader.” It was the first thing he said to Chase. “My name’s Limp, but it sure ain’t floppy, you know what I mean?” Then came the pucker of lips and fast wink.

  Chase sat in the passenger seat of Limp’s beat-up Honda Accord. They both had old Nikon FE cameras with 24mm lenses in their laps. Limp said it was all any news photographer worth a damn needed. If something happened far away, you strolled in closer. If you were too close, then you stepped back. A motor drive was made for wasting film and creating more work in the darkroom.

  “One at a time,” Limp said. “You squeeze ’em off real slow, one at a time, just like ripe pimples.”

  The odometer read 299,962 miles and Limp claimed to have a bottle of Cold Duck in the back hatch to celebrate the 300K mark.

  As they cruised the shaded road along Salisbury City Park, he said, “I sure do like breaking in the new boys.”

  Chase could hear the peacocks and other exotic birds echoing up from the small Salisbury Zoo, which took up most of the land adjacent and east of the city park. The zoo and park were sliced in half by Beaverdam Creek, where the slow-moving water was layered with feathers from black-necked swans, great blue herons, pigeons, bald eagles, and seagulls. Gulls were so ubiquitous that one had been named the mascot of the local college sports teams at Salisbury State. The maroon and gold were led onto the various sporting fields and courts by a trotting Sammy the Seagull.

  As a gentle breeze spun the feathers on the muddy creek in slow circles, Limp pulled up to a spot in front of an ivy shrouded split-rail fence. The small parking area divided the city park from the zoo. Limp explained it was his old standby spot for easy feature pictures.

  “Just like a good fishin’ hole when you were a tan and frisky ten-year-old boy. You knew right where to go when the mood struck you for some twelve-inchers.”

  They sat and took in the view of the late-morning visitors coming and going from the park and zoo. Baby strollers, ten-speeds led by the handlebars, and dogs tugging on their leashes—all possibilities, Limp explained, but not interesting enough unless he was on a tight deadline and needed to fill space quickly.

  “I use a special rating system.” Limp sat back in the driver’s seat and adjusted the camera in his lap. “Feature pictures run from one to three, like you were giving stars for a restaurant critique. One would be a kid throwing a Frisbee. Nothing more than some little honey pie with a nice expression. I’ll get his name, age, and town, then write up a caption back at my desk. Mack might complain but run it anyway. If I get a shot of the kid being hit in his little angel face with the Frisbee, I might rate it a two—if you can still see his expression and all.”

  “So what makes a three?”

  Limp paused to add something to the scene. “That’s when the boy’s dog is chasing the Frisbee and runs into him just as the disc bounces off his precious noggin’. If I captured the mid-air collision, eyes wide and scared, with the dog, boy and Frisbee in the frame, then bingo, that’s definitely a three.”

  Limp continued, “But if the boy gets hurt, then you might be screwed. A shot of a kid getting hurt is no good, although you might be back at square one with a news photo. A kid being loaded on a stretcher next to an ambulance is a one news photo. Now, if the kid dies from getting hit, then you may have a three, but they may not run the picture at all. This is a small town. Displaying pictures of dead children is frowned upon by local advertisers.”

  “So we have to come up with a front page feature photo every day?” Chase fiddled with the camera in his lap, still trying to grasp the f-stop versus shutter speed conundrum. “One per day and it may or may not get bumped to section two if there’s spot news?”

  But Limp had apparently decided he’d covered enough details. He closed his eyes and held an index finger to his lips for Chase to be quiet then adjusted the seat for a nap. Chase rolled down his window and felt the cool air trapped in this shady ravine. The air smelled like a circus, with hay and animals and something sweet like cotton candy. There were happy screams and gentle conversations as people milled about. The half dozen picnic tables just outside the zoo entrance were crammed with families.

  Limp began to snore so, camera in hand, Chase carefully escaped the Acco
rd and found a spot on a long log converted into a bench.

  One little boy, maybe three years old, dropped and retrieved his popsicle, meticulously picking away bits of dirt and dry leaves. A couple lay tangled on a blanket in a narrow spot of sunshine. Using his belly as a pillow, she read a book, while he faced the passing clouds. An old man fed squirrels from a baggie, but they kept returning to empty peanut shells, apparently spoiled by other treats.

  Chase figured Limp would rate these all a one as far as feature pictures went. Then he heard the sounds of some commotion—urgent voices—coming from the direction of the zoo entrance. Families from the picnic tables paused to look up. Chase was preparing to investigate the racket when he recognized laughter mixed in with the angry shouts. He held his ground when he realized the ruckus was coming toward him.

  The laughter and screams came from fifteen or so children moving in an excited group. They half-surrounded an elderly zoo volunteer carrying a whisk broom, attempting to herd an uncooperative litter of pink piglets back to the enclosure they’d apparently escaped from.

  The litter of ten moved in unison, with fish school precision. They brazenly rushed the frustrated woman, nipping at her boot toes, then wheeled about toward the children, who backed into one another with shrill screams. The wall of kids would re-form as the woman steered the litter with the broom, and the little pigs again found her boots interesting, possibly edible.

  Chase crept toward the scene, set his exposure to automatic, and manually advanced to a new frame. He knelt ten feet from the woman, who was trying to brush the piglets in a new direction they didn’t want to go. He squeezed off a frame, advanced, and took another. The woman’s monogrammed zoo cap was askew, and she wielded the broom with no sense of menace. The background of these images was the smiling faces, the pointing fingers of the children. Chase took frame after frame, shifting to stay at a distance, kneeling for a better perspective. Then from back inside the zoo came a loud grunt and two high-pitched squeals, as the mother pig apparently had woken alone. The tiny herd immediately altered course and sped full throttle in retreat. The spectacle was over. All that was left was frozen, Chase hoped, among the millions of light-sensitive silver halide crystals that made up the film in his camera.