Lake Charles (12 page)

There’s too much death
, I shuddered. All your life you busted your ass, paid your taxes, and bathed daily. Then one day the ax fell, and you scrapped like a shithouse rat just to stay alive. I switched the bulky paper bag to cradle in my other arm, and the cans rattled together. The wood smoke lay acrid and sooty in the air from the fires devouring the treed ridges. I felt nothing but pity for the fire crews knocking down a dollar over minimum because they earned every nickel.

Until the present, I’d nothing against the local pot farmers, but their twisted shit had crossed my family, and thinking about it just PO’d me more. I was damn tempted to carry on Cobb’s vendetta against them, but first I’d go find Edna.

***

The mucky stench to Lake Charles grew stronger at my approach to the earth dam. Moving on the pads of my feet, I advanced, halting every four steps, my radar alert for any trouble. At my next pause, I flinched. A hard cylinder had screwed into my ear. My balls rode up as I identified the hard cylinder as a steel gun barrel.

“Pass-phrase?” asked the man with cat paws for feet.

“No pass-phrase. It’s just me, Brendan. What did you drive?”

Mr. Kuzawa took the muzzle to the 12-gauge from my ear. It was good to hear again. He abandoned the deeper shadows. Several inches over six feet and built husky like Lee Majors with a bricklayer’s shoulders, Mr. Kuzawa used a deceptive shuffle. He liked a flattop buzz cut like seen in the Steve Roper comic strip. His chin, these days beardless, jutted at me.

“A trucker pal dropped me off at the state road, and I took a shortcut through the woods. Spin me up again.”

“Cobb, Edna, and I drove to Lang’s Teahouse on Saturday. We had Lake Charles all to ourselves, fishing and boating. Then Edna threw a hissy fit and ripped off on the jet ski. That’s when the shit started to hit the fan.”

“That fucking crotch rocket is an abomination. I kick myself for lending her the money. Did Cobb and she bicker again over his drinking?”

“Naturally. Cobb and I returned to the old marina, but she never showed. So we left and scouted the boonies until sunset. Worried sick, we returned and camped at the old marina. Two hicks sneaked in to bushwhack us, and I greased one of them.”

“At night? Do you see with cat eyes?”

“A lucky shot in the dark is all.”

“Boy, I’ll say. Give me the rest.”

“At daybreak, I ditched his weighted corpse in Lake Charles, and we bugged out after Edna. Our hike was rugged going. We bungled across a pot garden, and further on we hit a campsite. As we cased it, a grower armed with a crossbow shafted an arrow through Cobb. I’m sorry. He never saw or knew what struck him.”

Mr. Kuzawa groaned and ruffled his brawny shoulders. “Okay, okay. Where’s my boy’s body now?”

“He’s still at the campsite underneath the tree branches I cut.” Telling what I’d done sounded pathetic, and my gut muscles clenched.

“Holy Jesus, how can something like this happen to a father?” Mr. Kuzawa shifted in his stance. “My boy can keep. Our first mission is to rescue your sister.” He thrust the hard cylinder at me. “I requisitioned this 12-gauge, and it’s yours.”

“Did you bring any grenades or bazookas?” I said, trying for a joke.

“I can get my hands on any C4 explosives we might need.”

“I’ll just take your word for it.”

We left the earth dam for the gloomy dark woods. My flashlight beam picked up a rabbit trail that we followed. The tangy pitch pine cleared my sinuses. I sensed the proximity of Lake Charles that had attached its psychic tentacles to me. I’d almost broken free, getting as far as the cash-and-carry store where I then teamed with Mr. Kuzawa to return. My best opportunity to reach Edna had to lie along the shores of Lake Charles. The gut-wrenching specter of Cobb’s death appalled me. I’d grown too callous over seeing the spilled blood. I’d pray but I hadn’t attended Mass, recited a rosary, or made a Confession since my early teens.

“Wait up, Brendan. Your hands are full. If we plow into a shit storm, that’s all she wrote. Ditch those damn cans. I hate Spam anyway. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. We’ll live off the land.”

“Can you be more specific?” I asked, leery to trash any food.

“We’ll be scroungers. Save the hooch. I like how it fires my blood.”

I rummaged inside the paper bag and pocketed the other sardines. He traded me a clutch of 00-buckshot shells for the beef jerkies but rebuffed my offer to take one of Cobb’s .44s.

“Pop guns aren’t for me. No, the 12-gauges are boss. In fact, one night before the Chosin Reservoir campaign, I lit a blowtorch to crop off the barrel to a 12-gauge—”

“I’ll just go and get rid of these cans,” I said, not up for listening to any war stories. I went down to the shore and slung the bag to splat into Lake Charles. By the time of my return, Mr. Kuzawa had cracked open and drained a third of the whiskey bottle, giving his eyes a spooky radioactive glint. I got the bone-chilling impression that he viewed us as a pair of leathernecks back fighting it out on the Chosin Reservoir.

“Did this big bug kidnap Edna?”

“She vanished from the same area, and I found her barrette lying in their campsite.”

“Don’t let it drive you nuts, son. We’ll soon evacuate her.” He chambered a 00-buckshot load into his 12-gauge.

As we took off again, I forced a self-deprecating chuckle. “I feel ridiculous marching through the boonies armed like two vigilantes.”

“We’ll be the rangers.”

“No-no, uh-uh. We’re nothing like them,” I said, knowing their leader Cullen didn’t let rational thinking govern his often rash actions. We had to be smarter than he was.

“We’re not near the campsite, are we?” asked Mr. Kuzawa.

“Two hours walking. You know, I fixed Cobb’s killer. He’d no I.D. on him, but he’s dead.”

“A commendable action and you’ve my thanks, but this big bug gave the orders. So now I’ll go squash the big bug.”

“Kill him?” I arched a hard glance at him.

He gave me a nod. “I’m trembling to explode with rage, and I can’t pull out even if I tried. Are you with me or not?”

“All right.” I waved at him to press on. “I’m behind you.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear from you.”

Lake Charles was our visible landmark as we crossed a hilly pine forest. Soon the trunks and boulders clarified in the gathering daylight, and a great horned owl, all wings, swooped down at us. Mr. Kuzawa laughed at my cowering. The laurel branches slashed at our pumping thighs, and skirting the boulders slowed our progress. At last, Mr. Kuzawa gave a shout.

“Whoa, Brendan. Take five, son. Going at this clip, I’ll keel over from a coronary.”

“Blame it on the elevation.” I bent over at the waist, bracing my hands on my knees, my lungs also a wheezing bellows. “The oxygen runs thinner up here.”

“Uh-huh. Never mind I don’t look a day over fifty-five or your pack-a-day habit.”

“Don’t slam my cigarettes. Their tar counteracts the ink fumes eating away at my lung tissue.”

“Sure, you’re the Six Million Dollar Man.” Mr. Kuzawa shrugged back his bullish shoulders. “Is there less backstabbing at work? Cobb didn’t seem to think so.”

“Things could always be better. Brothers still don’t speak, but the past three years we’ve done well enough to turn a profit and get our annual bonus. You’ve got to like that.”

“That strike took place—what was it?—twenty-odd years ago. The outside agitators were behind it. Pierre Spartacus split Umpire down the middle. The sides drew up, and it was a local war.” Jutting his chin, Mr. Kuzawa scoffed. “What a waste. Why do the stubborn pressmen still fight that battle? Let bygones be bygones, I’d say to them.”

My cynical glance saw him nod. Longerbeam Printery wasn’t a jewel of a job, but I worked there, and he hadn’t for years. What did he know about it? The bitter, deep rancor would never let up. Some men were born to bear grudges. The strike ended before I was born, but I had to work in its ugly aftermath, not much fun on some days.

“Rested up?” I was on my feet.

He motioned with his 12-gauge to usher me off down the swale made a streambed in rainy April. My two-fisted grip to my 12-gauge didn’t let up. The .44s in my pockets hit my thighs. Perspiration oiled my palms, and I wiped them on my bandana. My hand sweats were a detox by-product, and I would probably never get over the physical craving to fire up a joint. My tongue felt dry as a stick of chalk. If I ever wanted to detox again, I’d pick a less nerve-wracking time than it was right now. He knew I hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. At the first dry, mossy patch, we bivouacked on his garbage bags spread out for ground cloths, one to each side of a fallen log.

Like a woodchuck, I nestled in a fetal ball position, wishing we’d a tarp to shelter us. The horror of arrows sliced from crossbows replayed behind my closed eyelids, and I feared a fatal arrow had lanced Edna. To calm down, I recited the words to a prayer: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou . . .”

* * *

In next to no time, a hand jostled me awake, and I blinked up. My grainy eyesight focused on Mr. Kuzawa crouched low behind the log and murmuring.

“We’ve got uninvited guests.”

I pulled up to my knees, and my fingers shucked out the shells from my pocket. Two shells spilled into the moss where I left them. Swallowing hard, I fed the ammo into the 12-gauge’s breech, slotting in a full eight-shot load. “Where are they?”

“Above us. I heard a silhouette slip along the ridge top. They’re out of our range, but I can snake my way up and ice them. Easy as pie.”

“You
heard
a shadow move on the ridge?”

“When I’m in my foxhole mode, I doze in spurts. It’s a handy knack you never forget.”

Wishing it was dusk bringing on the dark, and not dawn bringing on the sunlight, I had limited visibility to see much along the patchy ridge. “A bear or a buck is out foraging. Try hollering.”

He bawled out. “You there up in the trees! What gives?”

“Ahoy. Who have I the pleasure of addressing?” replied a man’s cultured voice from above us.

“Jerry Kuzawa.”

“Mr. Kuzawa … is that you, sir?”

“That’s what I said. Ain’t that you, Herzog?”

My confusion cleared. Herzog my lawyer had told me that he planned to scope out Lake Charles for hunting sites. A memory of our pre-trial meeting I kept avoiding added to my irritation.

“Come down and my 12-gauge won’t dust off your balls,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

“No cause to perpetrate any violence, Kuzawa.”

Mr. Kuzawa’s militant eyes darted to mine. “Why is he on the prowl at sunrise?”

“He belongs to the gentlemen’s hunt club,” I replied. “He takes himself for a mountain man.”

“Yeah, and I’m Mary Fucking Poppins.”

A lumbering gait marked his course off the ridge and down through the trees. Besides his disturbing my sleep, hunger and frustration also left me in a pissy mood.

“Seeing you here makes me wonder,” said Herzog.

“I could say vice versa,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

The oafish Herzog halted within spitting distance where his Aqua Velva scent swept over us. “I’m out reconnoitering because my hunting lodge makes it a practice to prepare early. Next week Dr. Smith will race his red ticks and start their field conditioning. He’s heard Lake Charles teems with game. Have you spotted any turkey scratchings? Or wing feathers dropped under the pines?” Herzog shifted the strap to the brown leather game pouch that Pete Rojos had fixed.

“We’ve seen the usual boar hog wallows, but nothing in the way of turkeys,” replied Mr. Kuzawa.

“No toms are feeding or roosting in this stinking sump,” I said. “Paranoid is my middle name so seeing a hunting license will help to back up your claim.”

Unflustered, Herzog produced his wallet and showed me his state hunting license. It was current. Being legal was a lawyer’s stock in trade. “If only you were as conscientious in our meeting for your trial prep.”

“My sister Edna went missing. Did you see or hear anything?”