The Deader the Better

by G. M. Ford

  Boris used the sling and carried his rifle over his shoulder in the manner of a soldier as they sauntered about the property together, pointing, talking out loud, occasionally putting their heads together and whispering back and forth. I walked over to the far end of the yard and looked down the Quileute toward the ocean. At the end of my vision, out where the final glare of the sun transformed the river into black ice, the heads of three seals poked above the surface like periscopes as they followed the salmon as far as they dared into the fresh water.

  Floyd and Boris walked a complete circuit of the clearing and made their way back to me. Floyd said, “Everything but the cars goes behind the cabin.” He gestured with his hand.

  “Out here on the lawn. That way the cabin’s between everything and the hill.”

  I said it made sense to me.

  “You said the wire man is going to have a van.”

  “It’s a motor home,” I said. “He just calls it a van.”

  “Back eet een so the rear is against the kitchen vall,” Boris said.

  Reduce the profile and get it where there are no windows. Simple enough.

  Floyd looked around. “I presume we can pop a few and it’s not going to be a problem. No close neighbors.”

  “No neighbors at all,” I assured him. “Pop away.”

  Pop away they did, but first Boris went back into the cabin and came out with a roll of duct tape and then they rounded up half a dozen cans from the garbage bin and carried them up to the tree line at the back of the clearing, where they taped them to branches all along the edge. Then they came back, retrieved their rifles. Boris took a shot. Nothing moved. Then Floyd. Same result. Boris worked on the rear sight with a small screwdriver. Floyd fired three times. In the descending gloom I saw the bullet hit the ground at the base of the tree. Floyd, likewise, produced a screwdriver. You could tell it was a contest between them. Like the Thug Olympics. Rifle fire. Standing. Prone. And Drive-By. I couldn’t tell who got off the first good round, but suddenly they had it zoned in. They both changed clips, took aim and started again. Tracers this time. The rifles made a soft popping sound as the yellowgreen streams of fire lit up the yard. And I could hear the soft tink as the slugs pierced the cans up at the edge of the clearing and they began to dance around. When Floyd stopped firing, Boris made one last run down the cans. Left to right, as fast as he could pull the trigger. Six shots, six tinks, six dancing cans.

  Even Floyd looked impressed. “A killer,” he mouthed.

  22

  AT RIVER LEVEL, THIS TIME OF YEAR, THE HILLS BLOCK the sun until nearly ten in the morning, leaving the terrain laced with frost, everything silent and silver and slick to the touch. And when the yellow light finally slanted down the hill toward us, it was as if the earth suddenly caught fire, as plumes of steam and fog rose from the frigid ground to join the haze that floated upward and finally disappeared, leaving an acrylic blue sky that made you feel like you could reach up and run your fingers through it.

  We had coffee, sugar, rice, three cans of peaches and a bottle of nondairy creamer. Last night we’d devoured every other edible morsel in the cabin. Other than a pair of lemons in the vegetable drawer, the stuff in the refrigerator was history. The kind of history where you throw the container out, too. In the cupboards we’d found half a dozen boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, five packets of Top Ramen noodles, a can of evaporated milk, one garlic bulb and a collection of canned vegetables. Floyd and I had opted for a box of macaroni and a Top Ramen each. Boris had eaten three cans of beets and, with a purple tongue, had professed to be as happy as a man could be.

  Around nine last night, Harold and Ralph had stumbled in and eaten everything that remained. In one of those moments that speaks well for the theory of evolution, Ralph, while satisfying himself that the refrigerator was indeed empty, went boldly where no man had gone before. He jerked open the crisper drawer at the bottom of the refrigerator and found four bottles of Rainier Ale resting atop a blackened head of lettuce. He showed class and offered them around. Harold reckoned how he might be willing to swallow one or two, but Boris, Floyd and I refused. Such unbridled joy is seldom seen in adults.

  By ten-thirty this morning, everybody had managed coffee and a shower. I slid the keys to J.D.’s Blazer and a hundred bucks across the table to Boris and told him how I wanted him to take the Boys to Port Townsend. To start with the cab companies and then with the taverns and, if that failed, with the bars. Told him to keep track of all expenses. As Harold and Ralph squeezed out the door together, I put my hand on Boris’s arm. He stopped. I leaned in close.

  “Don’t give them too much money at once. Make sure they eat before they start on the taverns. Whatever you do, don’t let either of them drive, and if they start getting too drunk to function, pack them in the car and drive them back here.”

  “Vat time?”

  “They’ll be hammered by five,” I assured him. Boris followed the fellas out the door and around the corner. I turned to Floyd, who was leaning back against the kitchen counter, slurping coffee from a red plastic cup.

  “You and I are going to town to see a guy about a flying saucer,” I said.

  “I can’t wait,” was his reply.

  Ten minutes later, we were halfway to town. Floyd found the Oldies channel. Del was singing a little “Runaway.” For about two minutes, I forgot where I was and why I was here and just cruised behind the music. Rounded a sweeping right turn. The sun flickering through the bare branches like a strobe light and a quarter mile ahead, parked on the right shoulder, was an old Studebaker pickup truck. Hood up. Even if I hadn’t remembered the Confederate cap, the lack of a shirt would have been a dead giveaway. Whitey’s head peeked around the hood as I pulled the Malibu to a stop behind the wooden tailgate. He wore those same gray and white coveralls and a big pair of wraparound sunglasses.

  “Come on,” I said to Floyd as I reached for the door handle.

  The old truck had been lovingly restored. The cab and the sides of the hood were fire-engine red. The rest of the body jet-black. Thick whitewall tires on spoked wheels. The tailgate was oak, sanded and then varnished to a sheen. Professionally painted Studebaker logo. Floyd walked up the shoulder; I stayed in the road.

  Whitey looked from Floyd to me and then began to back up, his boots scraping on the pavement as he backpedaled.

  “Need some help?” I asked.

  He stopped. His skin wasn’t so much white as it was transparent. He gave the impression that if one were to pull down the bib on his overalls, his internal organs would be visible. Floyd leaned over and stuck his head under the hood. Whitey frowned.

  “Great rig,” I said.

  “If it’d run.”

  “What year?”

  “It’s a ’ Coupe Express.”

  Behind the glasses, his eyes darted about.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Floyd.

  “Just quit,” said Whitey. “The battery’s not charging.”

  “You tested the regulator?” Floyd asked, jiggling one of the battery connections. Whitey couldn’t stand it. He walked around me and stuck his head under the other side of the hood. “New regulator, new battery,” he said.

  “That only leaves the generator or a short somewhere,”

  Floyd offered.

  “Better be a damn short,” Whitey said, to himself more than to Floyd. “Shorts I can find. I’ll have to go all the way to Seattle to find a generator.”

  “Can we give you a lift somewhere?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said quickly. “I’ll be okay.”

  Floyd pulled his head out from under the hood and started for the car.

  “Good luck,” I said and turned and followed Floyd.

  “Hey…ah,” Whitey said to my back.

  I turned around. “Yeah?”

  “The other day…you know, a while back there at the Steelhead?”

  “Dexter,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “No hard feeling
s.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Me neither.”

  “Sure we can’t take you somewhere?”

  He mulled it over. “Come to think of it, I’d ’preciate it if you would,” he said. “Lemme close things up here.”

  I stuck out my hand. “Leo Waterman,” I said. His hand swallowed mine. His palm had the texture of a cinder block.

  “Clarence Hunley,” he said. “I’ll just be a second.”

  I got back in the car and started the engine.

  “Kid looked pretty spooked when you first got out of the car,” Floyd commented. While the kid closed the hood and locked the doors, I gave Floyd a thumbnail sketch of our last meeting.

  “Good move,” Floyd said. “You see the arms on that sucker? Comes down to you and him throwing punches…my money’s on the kid.”

  “Mine, too,” I said.

  Whitey got in behind me. “Hate to leave her like this,” he said.

  “Don’t blame you,” said Floyd. “That’s a sweet unit.”

  I pulled back onto the road, heading for town.

  “Just got her on the road last week,” Whitey said. “This is the third time she just plain quit on me.”

  “How long you been working on her?” I asked.

  “Better part of two years. Belonged to my grandfather. Been out in the barn for longer than I been around. Did everything but the paint and the upholstery myself. Didn’t have no idea how hard it was gonna be when I started out. If Idda known…”

  “It was worth the effort,” Floyd said.

  “Thanks,” he said with obvious pride.

  “Where can we take you?” I asked.

  “Steelhead’s as gooda place as any.”

  We were about a mile from the tavern when he leaned forward. In the mirror, his eyes looked like dimes behind the glasses. “Hey…you suppose that instead of the Steelhead, maybe you could drop me…you know, someplace close instead?” I guess taking a ride was one thing, but being seen with me was another.

  “No problem,” I assured him.

  I pulled into an abandoned log scaling station about a half mile past the tavern. Weeds nearly as tall as the hood grew from the maze of cracks and fissures in the greasy cement. Whitey jumped out. Checked the empty highway in both directions.

  “Thanks,” he said. I wished him luck. His heavy boots slapped the road as he ran to the other side of the highway. I went into my voice-of-doom narration. “Now…to explore strange new worlds.”

  “You mean this isn’t it,” Floyd quipped. “It gets better than bubble-butt deputies and giant albinos wearing nothing but bib overalls?”

  “You have no idea.”

  As I drove the mile and a half, I filled him in on Monty and the government conspiracy to keep the truth from us. He nodded solemnly. “My mom believed in all that shit.” He twirled his index finger around his temple. “Crazy as a shithouse rat,” he said. Nature or nurture. On one hand, it was a good bet that whoever had nurtured a guy like Floyd was quite likely to have been more than a few degrees off center themselves. Onthe other hand, Kurtis Ryder’s family was about as mainstream as you can get, and he’s not just light in the fingers but in the loafers, as well. So I guess you never know. It’s like the Algerian said, “After a certain age, a man becomes responsible for his face.”

  23

  I HUSTLED ACROSS THE LOBBY OF THE BLACK BEAR ANDrang the hell out of the bell.

  “Goddammit,” he growled from the other room. “I’m right here. No damn need…” He stopped. His mouth popped open. Monty was so surprised to see me, he had to grab the doorframe to keep from collapsing. “I heard they got ya,” he whispered. “I thought you was a goner.”

  “You know how they are,” I said.

  “Goddamn liars,” he spat. He looked over at Floyd. “Is he…”

  “He’s with us,” I said gravely.

  Monty started to apologize, but Floyd cut him off.

  “Can’t be too careful,” he said.

  Monty put his bony hand on my shoulder. “He’s right. You gotta be careful. They damn near got ya once. They’re sure to make another try.”

  I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “We’re not waiting for them to make another try,” I said. “We’re taking the offensive.”

  “About damn time,” Monty said.

  “We’ve been lied to long enough,” Floyd added. I threw an arm around Monty’s shoulders and pulled him close. He smelled of old wool and fried food.

  “We need your help,” I said.

  He checked the room, paying particular attention to the ceiling.

  “What can I do?”

  “We need to use one of those RV hookups you’ve got out back.”

  His eyes took on a gleam. “Gonna do a little surveillance of our own, huh?”

  Interestingly enough, that was precisely what we were about to do. And against the goddamn government, too. Amazing how things work out sometimes. I’m down here running a number on a guy who believes in flying saucers and it turns out I don’t even have to lie to him. Made me wonder if maybe there wasn’t a message here someplace.

  “We’ve gotta be the only ones back there.”

  “Ain’t open this time a year anyway.”

  “Nobody can know.”

  “Course not.”

  “Deniability is everything,” Floyd said. “We learned that from them.”

  “Damn right,” Monty said tentatively.

  I described Carl and Robby and the van. Told him they’d be around sometime tomorrow to do a little setup work. After that they’d be camped out mostly during the daylight hours. He limped back inside his apartment and came back with a gold key on a floating key chain. Mercury outboard motors. “Gate’s way up this end. Lock might be a little rusty, but I don’t figure no rusty lock is gonna stop the likes of these guys.”

  I allowed how that was ever so true. “You just lemme know where they want to hook up and I’ll turn the juice on for’em,” he said.

  On my way out the door, I stopped and looked back over my shoulder.

  “Lotta points for you here, Monty,” I said in my most serious voice.

  “I’m a shoo-in now,” he said with a gapped grin. As I slid back into the car, Floyd was singing. “Doo doo, doo doo, Doo doo, doo doo.” Twilight Zone. “Told ya,” I said.

  Nelson’s Olympic Market was at the corner of Highway and Fourth Avenue, a quarter mile closer to downtown than the Black Bear. The kind of old-fashioned, family-operated market that I remembered from childhood. Narrow, wood-planked aisles and the smells of sawdust and aging meat. Signs. Several offering to butcher and store game. Meat lockers for rent. Another proclaiming: PRICES WERE BORNHERE BUT RAISED ELSEWHERE. Behind the meat and deli counter at the back of the store, a trio of fly strips coiled their way down from the ceiling, their yellow spiraled faces littered with winged remains, like sprinkles on an ice-cream cone. Ya hadda like it.

  Floyd was leaning back against the orange juice, hoping like hell nobody would notice that he was pushing the cart. I was pawing my way through the tomatoes when I looked up and found myself eyeball to eyeball with one of the Steelhead Tavern pool shooters. Not the guy in the Megadeth T-shirt. His partner. The one Whitey had called Monk. A beat-up thirty. Gonna be bald as a bowling ball before he was forty. His face was masked by three days’ growth and a sour expression.

  Monk may have been a decent pool player, but he’d never make a living at poker. I watched as his slot-machine eyes clicked on to who I was. He tried to look casual and cool as he returned a cantaloupe to its brethren, stuck his hands in his back pockets and then walked slowly up the center aisle in a loose-jointed and exaggerated manner, which I imagined he thought of as something of a manly swagger, but which, because of his bowed legs and the worn heels of his cowboy boots, suggested prostate problems more than latent testicularity. Floyd walked over to me. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean like how come
anytime anybody sees your face, suddenly they look like they just crapped in their pants?”

  “I’ve always had that effect on people. It’s a gift.”

  “Is that guy going to be trouble?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s not something we’ve got to deal with now.”

  We worked our way up and down the aisles. Disposable everything. Towels, toilet, paper plates, napkins. Two cases of beer. Ketchup, mustard and mayo. Pickles. Cookies. Crackers and three kinds of chips. Floyd requested Goldfish crackers and Fig Newtons—which had to be Nabisco. Add that to the four loaves of bread, the two pounds of roast beef, turkey and ham that I’d gotten from the deli, and I figured we had enough food to munch our way through Tuesday. After that, we could play it by ear. One hundred thirty dollars and sixteen cents. Eight bags full. I gave Floyd a break and told the cute little blond bagger—Samantha, if her name tag was to be believed—that yes, as a matter of fact, she could help us out to the car. Floyd and I followed along as Samantha threaded her way among the yawning mud puddles, expertly balancing the cart on the rims of the craters as she moved steadily toward the car. Suddenly Floyd’s fingers gripped my arm like a vise; he jerked me backward and shouted, “Hey!” I heard the roar of the engine and realized the Ford insignia on the front of the truck was way too high.

  Samantha turned her head toward the sound. I watched as her eyes expanded, as she abandoned the cart and ran headlong through the puddles, galloping toward the safety of the parked cars ten feet in front of her. At the same instant, Floyd pushed me between two cars; the truck hit the shopping cart, sending it airborne, dumping the contents in a line like carpet bombs.