Yankspart 2by Byron Bailey |
Table of Contents Part 1 appears in this issue. |
I’m no expert with that wrist thing those medical types do. But just on a hunch, I doubted Eckert Smoats had much of a pulse to check, not with his rigor mortis blue tongue hanging out like a strangled tomcat. His stiff fingers clutched an empty vodka bottle against his chest. Victim two hundred and — did the count matter anymore? Victim number whatever. Better to remember them by name. Not sure how much higher I could count. Victim number Eckert Smoats? Better. Victim Eckert Smoats? Even Better. Eckert Smoats? Best. I’m not sure if there’s any victims any more. On the other hand, I’m none to sure if there ain’t nothing but victims, either.
Eckert Smoats. Here lies a man — police officer — who tried to live up to his responsibility and died. Pa always said that living up to one’s responsibility was harder than chewing on granite. When one’s responsibility was underappreciated by the public at large, it was even harder, kind of like having to not only chew granite but to also crap it. The sheriff carts you off to county jail. Child protective folk come pounding on your door. Children rifle through your pockets while you’re comatose in the gutter. No respect at all for such a valuable service. Someone has to demonstrate the up-close-in-your-face results of alcoholism. Otherwise, everyone would be a drunk. No one could ever say that my pa failed to live up to his responsibility. As his son, no one will ever say that I failed to live up to my own, either.
I lay Eckert Smoats on the side of the road. Someone would find him. Then he would get a proper burial. That was the least I could do.
I drove as far south as I could. Sea gulls coasted on the wind like angels laughing down on the world. The road was as rough as a Yank’s table manners with pits as big as tires. If I had the inclination, I probably could have dumped Eckert Smoats in a few of them and the body would have never been found. For spite, I made a point to hit every single one of them. When the pleasure grew into tedium, I parked and got out of the car, stretched my arms and thought about popping the hood. It would be so easy. No more pain. No more responsibility. An ending even if it wasn’t a happy one. Just lift up on the hood and....
Instead, I kicked the headlights in. They wouldn’t stay kicked in but at least it made me feel better despite the blood now trickling from my ankle. Blood-thirsty vehicle!
I had taken HOR about as far south as I could without being in Mexico. Responsibility never came from Mexico, maybe never would. Up north again? Not having souls and all makes the Yanks more than a tad bit irresponsible. Nope. If there was an answer, then I had missed it. Nothing but ocean and sand, white-capped waves and white capped clouds, now.
“I’m gonna pop the hood now, you worthless heap of rust.”
I popped the hood then took a deep breath before lifting up on it. My throat tensed. Nothing left to do but open the hood or look at endless ocean. Endless ocean. I started to laugh, not quite my old self but still capable of seeing the irony of a situation.
“You’re gonna get it now, you poor excuse for scrap iron. Yes you are.”
I pounded my fist down on the hood, heard the latch catch with a disappointed click. “Yes. You’re going to get it.”
* * *
Dinky Cove lived up to its name. If anything, dinky seemed too grand of an adjective to describe the two ramshackle buildings and the creaking wharf that looked on the verge of disintegrating into flotsam and jetsam — each water-logged chunk floating its way to Cuba where it would be incorporated into a doomed-to-capsize raft. One shin-high wave and an entire family drowns. HOR had taught me to recognize a trap when I saw one and I saw one.
Even more of a trap was the floating contraption anchored off the wharf. I was none to sure whether to call it a boat or a ship. I decided to call it a vessel. Nice, enigmatic words were frequently the most useful of words. HOR couldn’t really be a car or automobile, either. Vehicle was the more accurate term. In spite of all the rust flaking off its hull, the contraption managed to float high in the water like a bobber dragging nothing but a hooked redworm.
I parked HOR. The first step I took upon the wharf made the structure sink precariously. I didn’t know how much weight it could hold. But I wasn’t a bad swimmer — not great mind you, but not bad either. If worst came to worst, I could probably swim to shore.
“Hey! Anyone there?” I walked up the gangplank.
No answer. Maybe I was in luck, if only I could figure out how to start the damned thing. Me and my mechanical ability!
Upon closer inspection, mayhaps vessel wasn’t the most accurate of words either. Craft? The smell on board reminded me of my earliest remembrance of the word craft: cousin Pig’s Eye cock-a-doodling about his new craft — honest employment unlike the rest of the “Grabinson shine slurpers.” I never did figure out what was so honest about shooting rabbits out of season, urinating on their hides, stretching those same hides on racks, then selling the hides to tourist centers. Tanning is what he called it. Well, I’ve been to the city and I can tell my cousin that those city fellows don’t use no urine when they do tanning. Instead, they have booths. Doing it the way Pig’s Eye does it is only perpetuating negative stereotypes people might have about Tennesseans. Perhaps it was the sea water interacting with the rust on the hull or perhaps it was my imagination. But that floating contraption smelled a lot like one of those stretched rabbit hides soaked in urine.
A man lumbered towards me. “What do you want, coming on this here... uh... craft without being so much as invited? You know, sometimes a little nosiness can get a person killed. They might see things that are best unseen. They might hear things that are best not explained. They might feel things they have no business in feeling.”
“I can’t agree with you more.” The fellow was undoubtedly one of those drug runners. I could see it in the beady, black glint in his eyes like a shard of obsidian waiting to slice a careless rockhound. I didn’t like the man but I understood him. Yank, through and through.
“At least you talk sense even if you don’t do sense. That’s better than some, I suppose. Now what the hell do you want?”
The man was perfect for my needs. If HOR wanted him, then HOR could have him — not that I actually wanted him to die, mind you. It’s just that a drug-running, rude-mannered, irresponsible Yank seeing under the hood would bother me less than another decent human being dead.
“I got a little proposition for you. You like money, don’t you.” Go to the heart of what every Yank loves.
“I don’t have anything against money.”
“Well, how would you like to make a quick $100,000 in sweet cash. Really easy work, it is. All you got to do is take my car and dump it in deep waters.” I’d like to see HOR try and evaporate the entire ocean! “That’s all there is to it.”
“Feels a bit squeamish, such a sweet deal with no catch. What’s not on the up and up? There a body in the back trunk?”
I bared me teeth in what I hoped was a wolfish grin. More than likely, though, I made myself look like a puppy. “You know, sometimes a little nosiness can get a person killed. They might see things that are best unseen. They might hear things that are best not explained. They might feel things they have no business in feeling.”
The man cackled. “Got it. Dead body in the trunk. Normally, that kind of work doesn’t appeal to me. Normally. But I figure I can make an exception in your case. I need half the money up front? I think that’s the standard arrangement in these situations.”
“I’ve done the standard arrangement before and it stinks. Give a person fifty thousand and they skip out. I’m not playing that game again. You’ll get paid when the job’s done, mind you, and not a second before. Don’t worry none. I’m not going to skip out on you. I’m going with you. I’ll be my own collateral.”
“Fine. You better be sure you’re on the up-and-up, though. Otherwise, you’re going to take a nap with the fishes.”
* * *
Getting HOR on deck was tubs of Tennessee sweet hooch easier than I thought it would be. The captain — he failed to mention his name which was fine with me — simply had me drive up to a platform. Then like a grasping, withered giant’s arm shoveling food into an endless maw, the craft’s (vessel’s?) crane arm picked HOR up and dropped HOR on deck. It was a less than pleasant image as I stepped on board. “I hope you don’t get the sea sickness and puke all over my deck. Because I’m not cleaning up any of your mess.”
On closer inspection, the captain didn’t look none to like a Yank with his strong jaw, callused hands, and lips that might be considered debonair if they ever stretched themselves into a smile. He didn’t talk like one, either. His drawl certainly wasn’t the strongest I ever heard. But it was still the accent of a decent human being, one without all those extra r’s at the end of a syllable that make Yank speech sound so much like gorillas grunting. He didn’t stink either — not like one of those tourists dumb enough to go “native” and actually wear one of cousin Pig’s Eye’s pissed-on hides. In fact, in most respects he seemed a good person. Somewhere, though, he managed to pick up a rather Northerly sense of hospitality.
We sat on deck, he in his fold-up, pea green lawn chair, me on an overturned bucket. I wasn’t mad. My butt wasn’t too good for a bucket. In fact buckets and my butt were well acquainted — all the forays into the hills in search of brookies. Those Yank tackle boxes were nothing more than an attempt to destroy the beautiful simplicity of fishing: you, the pole, the brookies, and the stream. If it couldn’t easily be tossed in a bucket, then it wasn’t needed. Besides, tackle boxes were none too easy to sit on.
We glared, coughed, and glared at each other. Then it happened! A woman’s wail pierced through the hull of the ship. No one could scream like that — not without being in enormous pain like someone was in the process of doing her majorly wrong. Adrenaline flowed. She could be someone’s mother, someone’s sister. She could be anyone! I jumped to my feet, sending the bucket sprawling across the deck.
“Sit back down and pretend you didn’t hear anything,” the captain said. “For your own good.”
“Own good?” I was torn between the urge to beat the captain into a mangled heap of flesh and to dash below decks to the rescue. That was when HOR gave out its own wail like a child having her fingernails ripped out.
The captain stood up from his pea green, fold-up lawn chair. “You bastard. You never said anything about the body still being alive.”
Another wail ripped through the hull. How could anyone in good conscience simply sit there and allow so much agony to continue? With a grin, the captain sat back down. Between the wailing from HOR and the wailing from below deck, I could barely hear his bitter laughter. “Traps,” he said.
I understood. My own bitter laughter added to the cacophony as I retrieved the bucket and sat down.
“Let me guess,” the captain said. “A hick used ship — er — car dealer with the ugliest red tie with puke green sparkles you ever did see offers you a deal too good to ignore. Five dollars? Maybe ten? Am I right?”
“Twenty-five,” I said.
“Twenty-five dollars for that heap of rust? You must have been desperate.”
I grimaced sourly.
“Well, don’t feel bad. I paid two hundred for mine. Pile of floating despair. Ruined my life, it did. Made me a wanted murderer. Five hundred and forty-three dead last count even though the feds only have me down for less than a hundred. They only count the people. My vessel takes more than people, though. Whales are its favorites. Usually takes about three a week. You can tell when it wants a whale. The vessel starts vibrating weirdly. That’s its call, I suppose. Then a little while later, some poor cetacean swims blithely into the propellers. Sad. This here ship has probably done more to decimate the whale population than the entire Japanese fleet.”
The wailing from HOR and the vessel increased, piercing my ear drum with a dull ache. It wasn’t quite as bad as a hollering contest back home. It wasn’t much better, though. At least with the hollering contest there was a break when Brogue Trepson or Nancy MacCamber giggled before the hollering. In Nancy’s case, though, the hollering was always more of an ineffectual shriek. She had a pretty, heart-shaped face that most men could fall in love with. After a few marital tussles with her shrieking, though, falling out of love would be equally easy. My pa had it right. Brains, breasts, and hips were all admirable traits in a woman. But if she didn’t have a holler a man could love, then the marriage was doomed.
“So, I guess you don’t have a hundred thousand dollars to pay me?”
I shook my head.
“Well, I guess that’s okay. You didn’t seem like the kind of person I would feel a great deal of guilt over if you just happened to peek in the engine room. We’re even.”
“I guess so.” I didn’t care to mention that he didn’t seem the kind of person I would feel a whole lot of guilt over if he happened to see under the hood.
“I don’t know if dumping your problem in the ocean will work,” he said. “I know it’s tempting. But I’ve done scuttled this here ship a dozen times and each time, she floats on back to the surface in an hour or two. Don’t know if it’ll be any different with your car.”
“My car don’t float,” I said. “My car sinks like a packet of lead shot and then boils away the water until there’s nothing left but muddy land. I don’t think my heap of rust is going to be able to boil away the entire ocean, though.”
“Probably not,” he conceded. “But all that boiling might end up in a lot of fish floating belly up. All the fish floating belly up is sure to attract the attention of some environmentalists. They’ll find the problem, retrieve your vehicle and the killing continues. Not at all a very responsible plan.”
I bit my lip, realized he made sense. My responsible wasn’t over, maybe never would be. “But what am I going to do, then?” I said. I didn’t think he had an answer. But still desperation made me ask.
“Do exactly as I’m doing and wait. One of these days, those NASA fellows are going to make it cheap to get stuff up into space. What we got to do is to try to get enough money — that one hundred thousand sure would have been nice — and wait until we can afford to launch your vehicle and mine into the god-damned sun where it can wail and scream and make all the traps it wants and no one will care.”
“How long will that take,” I asked.
“It might take a while, what with those Republicans taking chunks out of NASA to pay for tax cuts and those Democrats slicing and dicing the space program to pay for pretty much anything and everything else.”
Waiting didn’t sound like much of a plan but it was better than anything else I had thought of. But still, did I want to just sit? I’ve only tried two volcanoes and they weren’t even very hot ones. Hell, if a few more idiots got elected to public office, there might not even be a space program. There had to be a better way. Maybe I could think of it if only that damn wailing would stop.
Instead of quieting down, the wailing increased until it became right painful on the ears. I clenched my teeth and thought about kicking out the headlights again. A sledgehammer would have been pleasant. Bang. Crash. Kachunk. A few dents, a smashed windshield and maybe the wailing would stop. I knew I should have put root beer in the gas tank!
“Make it stop!” the captain screamed. “God! Make it stop.”
Copyright © 2005 by Byron Bailey
