Drawing Dead (42 page)

He could see part of the cabin—a neat, cedar-sided building with a stone chimney. He thought about sitting in the cabin, alone, listening to the wind, watching the water. Would Milo like it? No other cats. No Debrowski knocking on the door, scratching his ears, smoking cigarettes. Crow wanted a cigarette.

“You got a smoke, Dickie?”

“I don't smoke. It's bad for you.”

And on this island, there would be no Dickie Wicky. But here he was. Dickie Wicky. Because Crow had felt a moment of pity. Because he hadn't wanted to leave him waiting alone at the landing.

Or because he had wanted company. Because he did not want to run into Catfish Wicky alone.

“Joe?”

Crow twitched and blinked.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Let's see if we can find Jimbo.”

“I hear something coming from the cabin,” Dickie said, starting up the path. “It sounds like a train. 'Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka- chunk…”'

Crow let him go. To him, it sounded like a headboard slamming repeatedly against a wall. He thought he could even hear the squeaking of bedsprings. He stood at the head of the dock until the sound abrupdy stopped, then he got back in the boat and shoved off. He looked back at the island several times, feeling flat and gray, without the slightest twinge of regret or desire.

It
was nearly dark when the dogs finally wandered off. Tom and Ben waited until they had been gone a full ten minutes before climbing down from the branches of the basswood. The money bag was gone, dragged away by the dogs, or wolves, or hyenas. Neither Ben nor Tom had ever seen anything like them before—vicious, ugly, yellow- spotted beasts.

At ground level, the darkness was blinding. Tom caught a root with his foot and fell headlong into a black patch of unidentified foliage. Probably poison ivy.

“Tom? You okay?”

Tom stood up, his face a pale blur in the dark. “I still can't believe you put it on a fucking horse. You shoulda asked me. I know horses, man. I used to be a jockey when I was a kid. I rode Sweet Citation in the '69 Derby. Youngest jockey on the field. If I'd a known you were gonna bet the fucking farm, I'd a picked out a winner.”

Ben grunted. After confessing his betting errors at the track—a few hours in a tree could make a person do the strangest things—he had been subjected to three hours of Tommy telling him how he should have played it. It was demeaning, listening to a guy who used his testicles for analytical thought tell him how to play the ponies. All he wanted was to get out of the woods. He had already written off the money. Freddy could have the goddamn money.

“Which way's the road?” Ben asked, talking more to himself than to Tom.

“How the fuck should I know. I followed you into the woods, remember? What I get, chasing after a guy who would put five figures on a horse named Bad Bet.”

Ben stepped over a fallen sapling, and his foot plunged into icy water six inches deep. He pulled his foot out with a wet, sucking sound. The shoe stayed buried in the mud. He bent over and pulled the sodden shoe out with his hand.

“The thing to look for, you're putting your money on a horse, is the youngest filly on the field, and you bet her to place. You do that every race, you can't lose. I can't believe you didn't ask me, man.”

Pouring the cold, muddy water out of his shoe, Ben said, “Tomas, would you be so kind as to shut the fuck up?”

It
was getting dark. Crow drove back to Ozzie's cabin in a nasty mood, driving the Olds too fast on the unlit dirt roads. He had forty- two thousand dollars in cash and nothing he wanted to buy. Jimbo and the Wickys had soiled his dream.

What should he do with the money? To use it for living expenses was unthinkable, he told himself. He would become a slug, with nothing to motivate him. What could he spend it on? He had tried to give some of it to Debrowski, but she had refused and had even been offended by his offer. And Sam, to his surprise, had refused to take a cent. Crow decided to leave Ozzie a couple of thousand for the pornography collection. Another thousand for Natch, for the box of comics he had loaned them. As for the rest of it, he had the powerful urge to bet it on something.

A raccoon appeared in his headlights, scuttled safely off into the ditch. Crow thought, If that had been me, I'd have just watched the headlights getting larger.

At the cabin, he was greeted with a series of ugly growls. Chester and Festus had returned. Crow talked his way past them, moving slowly, promising the dogs liver for breakfast, but not his own.

Debrowski was sitting in a chair in front of the wood stove, chin on her chest, deep in sleep. He could hear Sam's snores echoing from the bedroom. Crow found a Coke in the refrigerator. He carried his Coke into the main room, sat down across from Debrowski, and watched her sleep. He lit a cigarette. Some of the debris inside him began to settle. He found a place in his mind for Joey Cadillac and put him there, wedged him in firmly. He found another spot for Catfish Wicky and buried her. He smoked his cigarettes and let his thoughts flow to the rhythm of Laura Debrowski's breathing.

At one o'clock in the morning, her eyes opened.

“Crow?” She sounded childlike; Crow wished he had a blanket to throw over her. “Did you see the island?”

Crow nodded.

“How was it?”

“Surrounded by water. I didn't like it.”

Debrowski nodded faintly and closed her eyes. Her face was smooth. The hard lines were gone, or invisible in this light. Asleep, she was at peace with herself.

“You want to go someplace with me?” he asked. “Help me spend all this money?”

Without opening her eyes she said, “Where?”

“Where do you want to go?”

He thought she had fallen back into sleep, but a minute later she said, “France.”

“France?”

Debrowski nodded. “I've always wanted to go to France. They all speak French there.” Her eyes opened a millimeter, watching him think. “It's very romantic.”

“Okay,” Crow said. “France. We'll go to France.”

Debrowski's lips relaxed and spread across her face in a sleepy smile.

The
next morning, they loaded Debrowski's Kawasaki onto the back of Sam's truck. Sam insisted that he would have the truck up and running before noon and that they should go on ahead. Crow argued that they should wait until they were sure he could get the truck going.

“I say this red fucker's gonna be running by noon, that's all there is to it, son. You calling your daddy a liar?”

Crow gave up. If Sam failed to get the truck going, he still had Jimbo's Olds. He and Debrowski drove off in Ben's yellow Cadillac, with the suitcase full of money. Sam watched them go. When the Cadillac was out of sight, he nodded to himself, then, under the watchful eyes of Chester and Festus, began the process of reinstalling the dried plugs, wires, points, and distributor cap. At one point he stopped, wiped his hands on his coveralls, lit a Pall Mall, and smoked it, staring out across the lake, smiling.

“A cabin on a lake,” he said.

Chester barked.

“You like this livin', eh, boy? Me too.”

Within an hour he had the truck up and running baby-ass smooth. He went back into the cabin, cracked a beer, sat on the porch with the dogs and drank it, his eyes occasionally shifting to the Gold's Gym bag sitting on the wood-plank floor. The bag was filthy and torn—it looked as if it had been dragged through the woods by dogs. When he had finished the beer, he unzipped the bag and looked inside, again, at the bundles of twenty-dollar bills.

“Dogs,” he said to Chester and Festus, “what say we run into town and look up that fella Jimbo Bobick. See if a little money down on an island don't make that sore foot of his feel a little better.”

Both
Crow and Debrowski were drained and enervated; they hardly spoke during the three-hour drive back to the cities. There seemed to be no subject important enough to overcome the inertia of exhaustion, nothing that couldn't wait. The radio didn't work, so they rode in comfortable silence. When they got home, they were both drawn zombielike to their respective beds.

At five o'clock, Crow woke up, late-afternoon sunlight pushing past the drawn shades. It was hot and stuffy in his bedroom. He had a headache again, and his mouth tasted of tobacco. I quit, he decided. He stared at the ceiling, trying to make pictures out of the cracks and stains…

He would have to call a travel agent.

Was he really going to Europe with Debrowski? Had she meant it? People say crazy things when they have been through a traumatic experience together. They fall in and out of love in a day. Had he ever even touched her? The only time he could remember was on her bike, holding on for his life. He would ask her when she wanted to leave for France, and she would light a cigarette and blow smoke in the air and laugh. He could imagine her saying, “France? Jesus, Crow, why would I want to go to France?”

Crow shuddered. It would be like hitting a full boat, then losing it all to a straight flush. He sat up, rolled off the bed, went into the bathroom, and cleaned his mouth. The flavor of the toothpaste made his tongue squirm. He dressed and started the coffee water, then lit a cigarette to get the toothpaste taste out of his mouth. He would finish the pack, then quit. Ben Fink's suitcase, full of cash, was still on the kitchen table, where he had left it. While the water heated, he thought about flying out to Las Vegas and investing the money in a game of no-limit Hold 'em. If he lost it all, at least he wouldn't have to decide what to do with it.

But before he went anywhere—France, Las Vegas, Australia—he had to get his Jaguar fixed. Probably just a matter of replacing a cracked distributor cap or something. Whatever it was, he could now afford to have it repaired. He felt like a jerk, driving the big yellow Cadillac, and besides, it wasn't his. He'd just leave it parked with the doors open. Within a day or two, it would disappear.

He opened the kitchen window to let in some air. Looking out, he noticed that the hood of his Jaguar was standing open. Someone was leaning over the fender, doing something in the engine compartment. He took a breath, ready to shout, when he recognized Debrowski's leather-clad back. What was she up to? He watched her do something with the wires, close the hood, then go back into the house. Crow grabbed his keys and went outside.

The Jag started immediately. He let it run for a minute before shutting the engine off. Debrowski's face appeared in her window, then disappeared. He locked the car and knocked on her back door. After a few seconds of listening to his own breathing, he heard her voice telling him to come on in, the door was open.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1993 by Pete Hautman

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