by Colin Deerwood

Thorny was a problem. He wasn’t where I left him after I’d clobbered him with the can of beans. I froze in front of the cabin’s porch. The Scout was still there. But the shadows were deeper and longer as the sun settled behind the trees at the other end of Little Lake. My ears piqued, I listened for any sound that he was nearby. I crouched lower, head cocked. I examined the dark shadowed undergrowth among the trees, ahead and behind me. If I was lucky, Thorny ran off when the shooting started. A snap of shrub or stick turned my attention to the path leading over into the berry bramble. If he still had his shooter, I was fish in a barrel. I ducked around the fireplace where the cook’s earlier fire smoldered and sent up puffs of smoke. I was looking for something to defend myself with. I picked up the skillet. It was heavy but too small and I didn’t think I’d have much luck batting bullets away with it. There was an assortment of forks but no knives. I knew where the knives were. In the kitchen. But I’d have to get into the cabin through the front door. A wide open target. I grabbed a length of firewood from the kindling pile. It was too short. Now I was sure something was coming from the direction of the brambles by the rustling and commotion. The loud grunts. Maybe I’d broke his skull when I walloped him with the gunny sack weighted with a can of beans and a jar of white lightning. And he was writhing in a death agony in the berry bushes. I grabbed a stout faggot from the smoldering coals in the fireplace and poked my head around the corner of the cabin. Even in the encroaching dark it was obvious something was shaking the bushes. It had to be Thorny.

“He was dripping blood from his jaw!”

I looked at the stick in my hand. It was smoking. The tip was a red hot coal. If I got close enough, I could poke him in the eye. I dashed across the yard to the shadows of a large lilac bush that Granny had planted there many years ago. I realize that the glowing end of the stick was a dead giveaway and was about to toss it when I heard a sound I was sure Thorny could never make. And I was right.

A large bear stepped into the clearing and poked its nose in the air. I knew enough to bury my leavings when I was done eating for the day. But I figure that Ruthie had left in a huff and didn’t bother to clean up. The bear stretched its neck toward the outdoor kitchen and then stopped because it heard it too. Someone was coming up the trail from next door, and I knew it was Marie. And she wouldn’t see the bear until she was right up on top of it.  I had to do something quick, no matter how foolish.

I jumped out of the shadows and brandished my brand while giving as loud and terrible shouts as I could manage. The bear was not impressed. Standing on its hind legs reminded me why it is not wise to confront a bear with a stub of smoldering wood. Even in the dim light I was pretty certain that the red drool dripping from its muzzle was not berry juice.

I waved the stick in front of me anyway. In the process, like a magic wand, the tip of the stick flared up with an angry flame, all that smoldering energy suddenly released. I was surprised, but the bear even more so. It settled back on its haunches and then turned and trotted off like it had never been there. No one would believe it if I’d have told them. Nobody but Marie who had seen the whole thing.

“You sure scared off old Abe,” she said, “He don’t like fire.”

“You know the bear?”

“Oh, sure. He’s been rooting around here for years. He won’t bother you if you don’t bother him.”

“He was dripping blood from his jaw!”

“You sure?” I could see that worried her. She shifted the rifle in her hand and stared in the direction the bear had fled. “What about Thorny?”

“Right over there by the Indian is where he came up on me. He had brought Kovic’s hoods along. Those are the two dead mugs over by your pa’s still. I figure Thorny came to and hearing the gunshots coming from your place made a run for it. Maybe I didn’t hit him as hard as I thought I had.”

“Well, it’s getting dark and we need to take care of other business.”

“The only business I can think of is me leaving here, and in a hurry.”

“No. I got to run my pa over to Doc Gallup to see after his wound. And there are two bodies that need taking care of.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You brought the mess. You have to help clean it up.”

“What, you want me to bury them?”

“No. We’ll take ‘em over to Middle Lake and dump them there.”

“Middle Lake?”

“Nobody’ll ever find them.”

It was like she’d done it before. She had it all worked out. I would cart the bodies down to their dock and load them in her pa’s skiff while she took him to see the local sawbones.

“That could take all night. What if Thorny comes back with reinforcements?”

She handed me the rifle. “You know how to use this, don’t you?”

I could have just as well taken off. Why should I care about the bodies? I planned to be long gone. I should have never listened to Ralphie Silver and agreed to take the job of looking for Kovic’s hophead daughter. I had to get my revenge after what he did to me. But that led me to Rebecca and the diamonds. And Al’s sister, the Empress’s Cucumber, the Thieves Of Bombay. My life was beginning to sound like one of Max’s crazy adventures. But Max, why hadn’t I thought of Max? All of a sudden it was all beginning to make sense.

Kovic’s mugs were dead weight. There was no way I was going to carry the bodies over my shoulders. I rummaged around the moonshiner’s shed by the light of a kerosene lamp, on the lookout for any booby traps, until I found a canvas tarp covering an old flatbed heap. I rolled the first body into the folds and dragged it down to the boat dock. The lake was calm and quiet and  the sound of the body bouncing against the gunnels echoed across the expanse. I had a bit of a struggle getting the bear trap off the other one’s leg, but he was a smaller guy and he dragged real easy.

Once I got both the corpses settled, I took time for a cigarette from the pack I liberated from  one of the thugs. “I Smoked A Dead Man’s Smokes” I thought sounded like a good story that might appear in one of those men’s magazine, depending on what you thought “smoke” stood for. He wouldn’t have any use for them anymore. For a couple of gunsels on Kovic’s payroll, they were surprisingly light in the money clip. Maybe they were hoping to replenish the dosh by icing me. Whatever the reason, it was mine now. If they weren’t going to be found, what difference did it make.

I’d finished two cigarettes and I might have closed my eyes a bit because Marie startled me when she called my name. “Stan?” I had been thinking about Thorny. He was a loose end, and still a danger if he got his wits about him. But first things first.

Besides I was the spitting image of Uncle Ned who I had just learned was probably my father and with whom she had been madly in love.

Marie fired up the outboard motor and steered out across the calm night lake waters, the bodies slumped at our feet. It had been a while since I thought of the size of Little Lake, a long narrow stretch of water that ended three quarters of a mile at the far end at a dam and spillway into Middle Lake. The last few rains had brought the lake levels up and the spillway roared even over the puttering of the outboard.

The moonshiner’s daughter angled the boat out of the strong current and touched the deserted finger of beach above the dam. The swarm of mosquitos weren’t as bad as during the late summer evenings she claimed, but it didn’t mean they were absent. I could hear them divebombing, looking for any patch of exposed flesh which on Marie was plentiful. It didn’t seem to faze her. And when I slapped the back of my neck where it felt like a squadron of them had landed, she laughed. “Penny Royal, that’s what keeps ‘em away.” And she slapped at a bare arm, “Most of ‘em, anyway.” She help me drag the bodies to the overlook and drop them down the chute. They were swallowed by the dark and the churning froth at the bottom. We didn’t say much to each other as we looked out over the dark distance of the swamp that was Middle Lake. It wasn’t until we were half way across the lake that she thought to say something. “When I said pa never did shoot nobody, I lied a little. But the ones he did was before my time, mostly city bootleggers. His first wife. Her boyfriend. All swamp meat for the skeeters.”

I was exhausted so I didn’t resist when Marie invited me into her bed. I’d once teased her about the boys at her school. “They’re only after one thing.” But she did admit to kissing one or two. “Just a peck, never a bushel” she says mischievously. Then on second thought, “Well, almost never.” I was her first man, the others were just boys. Besides I was the spitting image of Uncle Ned who I had just learned was probably my father and with whom she had been madly in love. I was road tested and put through my paces. After all that, I had no problem dropping off to sleep. And she woke me at first light to say she was going to retrieve her pa who’d spent the night in Doc Gallup’s surgery.

I figure I’d be making tracks as well, and she walked with me to where I’d left Ned’s motorcycle in front of Granny’s cabin. I knew what she was thinking and I was going to have to say no. A wisp of mist rose over the lake’s waters and the cool air was little respite from what promised to be another scorcher. Morning light seeped through the branches of the trees and illuminated the wooded glade the cabin occupied. The Indian was still standing and the gunny sack I had walloped Thorny with, both the can of beans and the jar of shine, no worse for the wear. I didn’t detect any brains on it. The clout had just knocked him out. From the corner of my eye I caught the gleam of metal at the edge of the path to the berry patch. It was Thorny’s pistol.

“Did you lose a shoe?”

I could see what Marie was pointing to, a man’s scruffy  half boot, and just up from it I made out a shape that didn’t belong to the bramble. Two and two were coming together to make sense. This was exactly the spot where the bear was fussing about when I’d come back looking for Thorny. I thought he’d run off when his pals hadn’t come back after all that gunfire. I was wrong.

I hunched down next to the body to get a closer look, Thorny was obviously better than dead, he was, in fact, the deadest of all.

A thin gold chain with a charm depicting a candleholder, what Granny used to call a chamberstick, was wrapped up with the hundred dollar bill.

Marie crouched beside me. She had come to a similar conclusion. “I can’t believe old Abe did this. He must be getting senile.”

“That’s what it looks like.” His jugular had been severed and he’d bled out. I stepped away from the body and back into the clearing near where Thorny and I had had our last encounter. Splotches of blood were visible in the dirt and weeds leading up to the bramble where the body lay.

I pointed to where the trail of blood began. “He must have run into the bear here. The question is, how long was the bear in the brambles? Was it before Thorny highjacked me? Not that much time passed between when I knocked him out and Kovic’s thugs started shooting and chased me and then ran into you and your pa. If I had to guess, I’d have to say that the bear was there at the time of the first shots fired. It probably scared him and he attacked the first thing he came upon. Thorny.”

Marie gave a little squeal. “Oh, this is just like in one of those William Powell movies!”

“But here’s the problem. The amount of blood at the beginning of the trail is just a few smears and globs.” I didn’t want to get too technical with her. “So I’d say his throat was slashed after he started bleeding. Because where he fell the ground is soaked with blood.”

“What does that mean?”

I crouched down next to the body again. “We’re assuming that the bear did this. One swipe with his big claws slices the artery in his neck. But if you look closer at the wound, it’s not as big as you’d expect, not bear claw big anyway. And besides he’s been shot.”

“Shot. How can you tell?”

I pointed to his chest. “That is a bullet wound. And for all I know, so is the one in his neck, the one that made sure he was dead.” I reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and fished around. “Those fools were firing blind in the dark. They missed me and got him. That, or it was the bear.” I pulled out a folded bill. It was a C note. The C note Kovic owed me. It took the long way around and it finally got to me.

“What’s that?”

A thin gold chain with a charm depicting a candleholder, what Granny used to call a chamberstick, was wrapped up with the hundred dollar bill.

“A necklace. You want it?”

She jerked away, repulsed, and then just as quickly brought it closer for a better look.

“That’s her charm necklace, the candleholder!”

“Whose?”

“Judge Chandler’s daughter, my friend, Sissy!”

Finding Sissy’s necklace opened a can of worms. First, Marie was dumbstruck and began tearing up.

“How could I have been so stupid!”

I tried to console. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

It had been a while since anyone thought my nose was plain. It has been bumped, tweaked, bent, target of not a few fists, and, as a result, broken. It probably stopped being plain around the time I turned thirteen.

“All those girls. The ones that went missing. Year after year. Some were thought drowned, some just were missing, runaways to the big city. I knew a lot of them. Or knew of them because they had, well, you know, a reputation. And I’ll bet they’d all gone on a ride with Thorny!”

I could have said that the evidence was circumstantial, but she didn’t want to hear that. I let her rage. She jumped to her feet, using words that I didn’t think she knew, spit at the corpse, and then kicked it before running off sobbing. Her parting words were, “I’ve got to go get pa.”

Who am I to step on a man’s dream?

I was left with another body to dispose of. I didn’t think it would be wise to ferry it over to the Middle Lake dam in broad daylight. And I was itching to be gone. I hiked up to the road and down to where Thorny’s heap was parked. I figured the gray coupe behind it belonged to Kovic’s men. I started up the constable’s green ragtop and drove it on the overgrown track to Granny’s and eased it down the hill till I was even with the berry bushes. Thorny was dead weight but I was inspired to get what I had in mind done. I tied him to the steering wheel with an old rope I found in the backseat and released the handbrake. The wheels rolled about half a turn before stopping. I put my shoulder to the rear bumper. That did the trick. The green Ford started slowly down the hill toward the lake. Then it picked up speed, hurtling toward the dilapidated dock. It was going to be a tight squeeze between the dock and the big boulder at the bottom and I worried it might get trapped before the jalopy hit the water. Gravity took its course and sent the motor carriage up the side of the boulder, somersaulting into the lake with an impressive splash. I didn’t waste any time watching Thorny begin his descent to the bottom of Little Lake, a little lake but a deep one.

I buzzed into Ridley in no time and met no one on the road with the exception of a few farmers and their horse carts. I recognized one as Three Fingers McGee headed over to open his farm stand who craned his head slowly in disbelief as I sped past. I was in a hurry to get away from the lakes. If the city was hell, this place was worse.

The grease monkey at the Livery Stables wasn’t too sure what I meant when I said I was leaving the Indian Scout with him, and he should talk to Ruthie about buying it. I didn’t mention that by rights I was the rightful heir to old Ned’s property. And I told him he didn’t have to worry about getting any grief from Thorny. Ever. I bided my time by the soda machine and listened to him tell me the story of his life and what it was like growing up hereabouts, telling me how he’d always had a crush on Ruthie even though she was older and married with kids. I didn’t say anything. Who am I to step on a man’s dream?

Finally the bus from Big Lake made a stop and I got on. I might have looked a little rough but the bus was near empty and I dragged my satchel to the rear and stretched out across two seats. The can of beans weren’t going to  do me any good, but the jar of clearlight would ease my traveler’s bones. I had a half pack of expensive foreign cigarettes and an unexpected hundred dollar bill. I thought of Marie. I thought of Rebecca. I thought of Grace. I didn’t have much luck with women. Maybe I wasn’t trying enough. But I didn’t have time for any entanglements. I had to concentrate on my plan to flee the country and leave the cops, the feds, the mob, the diamond syndicate, the Thieves of Bombay far behind. Getting a passport and a new identity was next on the list.

The driver honked his horn a couple of times and then slowed down and pulled to a stop at the edge of the highway. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he hadn’t shouted, “You’re going to get yourself killed standing in the middle of the road like that, young lady!”

I knew the sound of the voice that was going to answer.

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Next Time: Back Into The Frying Pan