Relief.
My phones were still in the weeds.
Just like me.
[47]
I drove home. Past fast-food restaurants and baseball fields, parks and the brief ache of that particular coffee shop. Drove through a grid and grief of traffic so predictable it lacerated me now, when I wanted to go fast and reckless. We all expected the slowness, even if it didn’t slow us down. All of our minds drifting there together alone.
The needling pulse, the inability to resist, to analyze: why was Fusk so resistant? On principle? Because, in his circles he’d know Langer by reputation alone? Or because that hummingbird in particular meant danger to him? I had Fusk and Furtown and a journal full of memories. I had a man behind a fence doing violence to another man.
Even when the traffic lessened, I kept driving slowly—into our neighborhood. Drove like I was a solid citizen. Parked in the driveway and got out casual. Didn’t bother going inside but walked to the backyard, onto the lawn. The swing seemed peaceful to me. I liked standing in that space and not seeing a soul. I let out a long, deep breath, looking up at the windows of our house.
Start over. Try again. Work with what you have.
I called Fusk using yet another phone card, yanked out of Shovel Pig’s guts.
When he answered, I railroaded over his “Hello?”
“Fusk, next time I’ll call from an open line, easily traceable, and whoever you’re afraid of will know for sure I’m the one who called you. I’ll do it. I don’t care anymore.”
Wreck the shreds of my anonymity to expose him. Burn down another part of my life. Because I had to. Because they already knew where I lived, so what did it matter? Except, it did matter. I was sweating, pacing. Decided to retreat toward the woods.
Silence. He didn’t hang up, but he didn’t say anything. I needed more. I could feel it. Luckily, I had more.
“Fusk, this is your life: your son doesn’t write. Or call. He posts on social media when your birthday comes up. He definitely doesn’t visit. Your daughter doesn’t even bother with social media. Your wife’s been dead a decade. You had some boom periods, but now you’re about three months from going out of business. You like bondage porn. You visit prostitutes. You aren’t a criminal, not really, but you know criminals. And that’s just the start of what I know about you. Answer my questions or this could get worse for you. In a lot of ways.”
Fusk breathed into the phone like someone on life support.
“Fusk?”
“I knew from the look of you that you had a mean streak,” he said. Flat, neutral.
I almost laughed at that. The last thing I cared about was an insult from Fusk.
“Tell me what I need to know. You’ll never hear from me again.”
Almost in the woods. Out of the sudden sun. Out of sight.
“Promises.”
“Truth.”
“Won’t matter,” Fusk said. Matter-of-fact. Fatalistic.
“To who, Fusk?”
Something was in the spot where a vagrant had watched our house. Obscured by the branches of a bush, enveloped by a rush of dead leaves.
“I dunno. Wildlife traffickers. Anarchists. Lots of folks. You tripped a wire. I don’t want to be in the cage with you.”
“Because of Silvina Vilcapampa.”
Now I could see it clear: next to the empty bottle, propped upright like an impromptu gravestone: the little bird drone. Smashed. I had to work on my breathing again. I was suffocating, my chest tight.
A loud, bitter laugh from Fusk jolted me back to reality.
“What’s funny?”
“Silvina. There’s a name to forget you ever heard.”
“Tell me why.”
As I stood there, looking down at the drone, the bottle.
Worse, this time it wasn’t one cigarette butt. Instead, a half dozen, each a different brand. The boot prints that obliterated the former shoe prints looked melodramatic, like someone had taken care to push the tread into the drone and the leaves and earth beneath. Marking territory.
An irrational pity for the drone, the delicate cracked beak, the shimmering brittle brokenness of the wings. The vacant eye that had never truly seen as a bird sees.
“I don’t think I will tell you why.”
“Names—I need names.”
Defiant. Despite the uptick in how my hand on the phone shook, how Shovel Pig felt double heavy on my shoulder. I could smell the cigarette smoke, cloying, on the leaves. Recent?
“If you’re involved with the Vilcapampa family, they’ll be tracking you already. They’ll find you. You’ll know their names soon enough.”
“Silvina’s dead. Why do they care?”
Said as I squatted beside the bottle and drone.
“Well, there you go. Your first clue.” Contemptuous.
“I need to know about a salamander, too. Taxidermy.”
The bottle had a price sticker on it that looked familiar. Maybe if I hadn’t been distracted, if I had said something more into the silence on the phone, Fusk would’ve ended it there. Maybe I’m kidding myself.
After a long moment, Fusk gave me an address two towns over. The address felt familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“It’s in a … The place is a kind of repair shop now.”
“So?”
“R.S. runs it.”
A pure spike of energy. That would explain why I hadn’t found an R.S. who ran a taxidermy business. I’d checked antiques stores, too.
“What’s R.S. stand for?” I tried not to let my elation show in my voice.
“Ronnie Simpson.”
“And how do you know Ronnie Simpson?”
“How does anyone know anyone these days?”
“Suddenly a philosopher.”
“You’re the detective—figure it out.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
Stupid thing to say, but I had picked up the bottle, not thinking about fingerprints or gloves. Nothing unusual about it, and clear enough that I could tell nothing was inside.
“I can’t ask the questions for you, Detective.”
“Call me if you do think of anything.” I gave him a secure number, to a burner phone I hadn’t used for anything else, and tossed the bottle onto the ground.
“Yeah, right. You can be sure I won’t.” Then, with a click, he was gone.
Conclusion, staring at the heavy tread, the cigarette butts: someone was fucking with me. The drone was strangely like an offering. But it also told me whoever stalked me was sophisticated enough to take out the neighborhood surveillance.
Was Fusk fucking with me, too, with his claim about R.S.? The levels kept changing, like in MMA. You’d think it was a boxer’s advantage and then the ground game would kick in.
I stood there in the woods for a long time, thinking. Going round and round. Trapped. Frozen. What did the world want from me? What did Silvina need? What did I need? A pattern of cigarette butts in a rough circle on the ground told me the answer. A bottle with a familiar sticker.
Wanting to break out from the trap.
So I tried. I did my best.
[48]
“There’s no one they won’t kill in time because you don’t matter to them. There is nothing they won’t take from you. Because they simply don’t care.”
A call with Fusk. An intruder in the backyard again. A missing hummingbird.
I had finally placed the address Fusk had given me: it was Unitopia, the environmental center funded by Silvina’s family. I devoted a moment to kicking myself for not investigating it already.
“They’ll use you against you. They’ll isolate you. They’ll marginalize you. They’ll use lies and the truth. Whatever they need. Because they don’t care.”
But R.S. was for later. Because I knew in my gut the man I’d beaten up on the hill wasn’t whoever was watching our house—and I had a hunch about that.
I got back in the car and drove to my local convenience store, just outside of our subdivi
sion, at the edge of a highway. It doubled as a gas station. The usual. Windows plastered with advertisements for all the things we were supposed to want that were killing us. Nothing resembling a black SUV in the parking lot.
Inside, the clang of bells announced me. The place wasn’t a favorite haunt—the kind of store you went to only if you woke up in the morning and realized you’d forgotten to buy eggs or coffee at the supermarket. It appealed more to motorists making a pit stop. It always smelled faintly of pot.
Stopped short a moment realizing there would be surveillance cameras.
But the woman behind the counter had already seen me. A weary, thirty-something Black woman, dressed in a business suit, which made me think a manager was subbing for a sick employee. A surgical mask hung slack around her neck, like the chain had issued them but hadn’t told employees it was mandatory yet. Like most places.
“Hi, there!” she said, a kind of vacant hope in her voice. Up close, the caverns of her eyes made it clear she didn’t get much sleep. There was a tear in the sleeve of her blouse. Her pink nail polish had chipped. Details were escaping her. I sympathized.
“This may seem like a strange question,” I said, braced for resistance.
“I don’t think it will be,” she said, smiling. Practically beaming.
What did that mean? What did the smile mean?
I decided to ignore it.
“Have you had someone come in recently who buys a lot of different types of cigarettes?”
At least ten kinds protruded from the shelf behind her head.
“I did!” she said, with such enthusiasm it wrong-footed me again.
“Did he give you a name?”
“Nope.” Again, so cheery, against the grain, that I wanted to coach her. Don’t bother with this one. Preserve your energy.
“What did he look like?”
“Normal, except for the wig. White, a little tall. I didn’t really notice because of the wig.” Said puzzled, like she’d just realized she couldn’t provide a description.
“Wig?”
“He had on a hoodie, and under the hoodie he was wearing a wig. Like a clown.”
“Clown?”
“You know—a cotton-candy-colored wig. Like for a party.”
I felt the beginnings of a stomachache. That detail got to me. It suggested someone with a sick sense of humor. It made me think of pranks, of derangement.
“Was he young, old, or…”
“Not really anything. I mean, I couldn’t tell. But not in his twenties.”
“What do you mean ‘Not really anything’?”
She shrugged. “He aged well? Or … I just didn’t notice.”
“How long ago was this? When he came in.”
She hesitated, and the smile had begun to fade. I began to get a floating sensation.
“Ten minutes before you came in just now?”
Ten minutes.
Floating became a falling. Nausea. Focused on the neon-red roll of lotto tickets, the calm rows of blue-and-green disposable lighters, the silver-wrapped caffeinated protein bars.
Where was this man now?
“He’s your boyfriend or something, right? This is part of the scavenger hunt?”
But she already knew from my reaction. She went quiet, the look on her face as if a lemon drop had teleported into her mouth. Not in a good way.
“What do you mean?” But I knew what she meant.
“This man in the wig—he told me you’d be coming in and asking about him. He said you were old friends. That it would be funny to tell you. That you’d laugh about it.”
The sound had come back to me, of one man scuffling with another behind the fence. Of one of them falling. Of the calm of the other.
“He showed me your photograph, too.”
“What photograph?”
She hesitated again. “Of you at your daughter’s birthday party.”
* * *
Numb, I drove back to the house. A photo from my phone. A photo from my phone. How long had it not been secure? I resisted the urge to smash it against the dashboard and toss it out the window. I needed to know the extent of the damage. Better “they” not know for sure that I knew.
I turned the key in the front door, decided, paranoid, to go in the back door instead. Checked every room for signs of an intruder. Found nothing.
I stared down at the lawn from the master bedroom, then stepped away from the window. The sense of vertigo was intense. It was hard to get a grip on what was happening.
The woods down below on the fringe looked like a blank wall of brown with hints of dull green. It had begun to rain, a chill back in the air. I was sweating. I could hear the sound of my own breathing. What now?
It took an effort of will to walk downstairs. I had to check something, a stray thought, another bit of paranoia. But I had to be sure. Along the way, I picked up a poker from the fireplace, went outside, my limbs watery, letting the poker drag across the grass. A thudding in my ears.
Out to the woods. In the rain. The mist of it pearled on my clothes, sunk in damp and humid.
There was the bottle, placed upright again.
But no drone. Not a single piece of the drone remained, as if I’d imagined it.
Beside the bottle: unsmoked cigarettes of various brands formed a taunting circle around the bottle.
But there was a gun, too. A semiautomatic. Small, easily concealed. With clips beside it. Lying atop a white, starched handkerchief.
Messing with me. For real.
I was too shocked to be shocked further. And behind that a question loomed. I knew I could be dangerous. That I could get in someone’s face. Could I pull the trigger, too?
My work phone buzzed from an outside pocket of Shovel Pig. A text. I pulled the phone out.
An unlisted number. Untraceable, as it turned out.
>> I hope you like what I left for you.
I looked at the words without them really registering. How long had my phone been compromised? Somehow, getting the text there, outside my house, was worse than if I’d still been in my car.
Me: Who is this?
>>Can’t you guess?
Me: No.
>>Are you sure you don’t want to guess?
Me: Who is this?
>>I’m your brother. Back from the dead.
Fuck. I almost dropped the phone. The shock. The sense of violation.
Then I took a breath. He wanted me flustered. He was telling me he knew all kinds of things about me. That was all.
Me: Not funny, asshole.
>>No, not funny. Apologies. Well, if you won’t guess, I guess you can call me “Hellbender.”
Hellbender. The Goliath of salamanders. Another unsubtle message that he knew my past. I don’t know why I thought “he,” but I couldn’t shake the idea.
Me: Leave me alone. Or I’ll call the police.
>>Oh, by all means. Go right ahead. Shall I tell them about your contraband? Or about breaking and entering?
The man who I’d beaten up on the hill wouldn’t give me a gun, either.
Me: What do you want?
>>I just want to help.
Me: Right. What do you really want?
>>I took care of the guy watching your house, didn’t I?
That made me pause. A jolt like I’d had to hit the brakes at a sudden stoplight. First one cigarette butt, then a half dozen. The almost comical layering of boot prints, erasing the shoe prints. And the weight behind the fence? Was the texter Langer or was Langer dead? But I couldn’t bring myself to ask that.
Me: I don’t want help like that.
>>Hellbender thinks you do want help like that. Hellbender thinks you need help like that.
Me: Stay away from my house.
>>Oh, I have. If I wanted to be in your house, I would.
Me: Just stay away!
I waited a minute. Two minutes. No reply.
A neighbor was mowing their lawn. A leaf blower sounded somewhere in the distance. A bird
was singing from a tree above me.
I picked up the gun, hid it under my jacket until I could stash it in Shovel Pig. Along with ammo clips.
I don’t know what army Hellbender thought I would be fighting, but it was a lot of bullets.
[49]
Staring at the gun, I felt my grandfather closer than ever. I had good reason to push his ghost away—and I worked at it the hardest when I was around my daughter. I couldn’t relax knowing he lived within me. We called him “Shot” behind his back. He called me “Bullethead” to my face. He liked to shoot bottles and deer. He went off like a shot. He was shot. It rhymed with his real name, and maybe reducing him to triteness felt like containing Shot in a box. His father’s father had established the farm, a homestead specializing in nothing and in doing everything ground down to nubs in a world of modern machinery and specialization. One hundred acres become fifty in a generation. As if Shot’s anger kept choking the land. Shot’s brand of stupid, which felt so unnecessary. My father wasn’t stupid, but he let Shot make unwise decisions.
What made things worse: we were surrounded by normal farm families, doing normal, understandable farm things. Not given over to stupid schemes, like the time we tried to grow boutique crops for hipsters because some rep convinced Shot to “give it a shot.” Or the idea we could lead tours of the farm and charge cash money. Or … so many things.
Even though Father was a grown man, Shot set the schedule forever and a day. Chickens, cows, crop rotations. Because he never passed all the knowledge down. Weak men know they’re poor in virtue and take their self-knowledge as evidence others will plot against them. So they want to be the only ones who know things.
Shot drowned a chicken in a water trough more than once. For crimes unknown. Always some excuse. The inchoate argument that led him to the act forgotten in the memory of the dead eye and waterlogged feathers. The stink that rose soon after.
He sure liked to hunt, Shot did, and to get really drunk doing so. If you think that’s a stereotype, you don’t know the area, because that was kind of universal. There were places you didn’t go because of drunk poachers, and you never ever thought about reporting it to the police.
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