Skunk Hunt (44 page)

"You're not my brother," Todd said abruptly,
turning away.

"Are to."

"Are not."

"You're brothers," Carl snapped at Todd.
"It's that, or you've been lying to us. I hate liars, in case you
don't know. I can take a lot, but lying..."

"We're home," Joe Dog announced.

I looked out the window and was surprised to
find he wasn't joking. The peril of the moment had distracted me.
We had crossed the river and passed the University of Richmond
without my noticing and we were now in the realm of anonymous
fortunes. When we pulled up in front of Todd's house my heart did a
downward spiral. On my last visit I had not gotten a good look at
the front yard, approaching instead through the alley. The back
yard hadn't been up to snuff, but in my experience back yards never
are.

Out front, lawn ornaments were flaked and
spalled like Pompeian elves frozen in death. Boxwoods flung out
untrimmed branches seething with wildlife. The house itself was in
need of serious renovation, with paint peeling off the eaves and
cracked windows competing for the scrap heap. At the corner of the
house stood a rain barrel, which I guessed was empty, seeing as the
gutter was broken in a half dozen places and the spout turned
cockeyed up at the sky.

And this was only what I saw from the
van.

"You can take the boy out of the trash, but
you can't the trash out of the—"

"Hey, I get enough shit from the neighbors,"
Todd cut me short. Getting out of the van, I quickly saw what he
meant. All around the yard were notes posted on surveyor sticks.
Todd was so lax he hadn't bothered to remove them, leaving a
complete history of community protest. The notes started jokingly,
like what kids write on dusty cars, as in:

"Please clean me!"

Followed by:

"Please clean me! I'm spawning maggots!"

But after "This is no joke, clean up!" the
signs grew smaller, semi-friendly and not-so-friendly handwritten
posts shading into the amicability-free printed officialese of "or
else". These were notices from the local homeowners' association
and civic authorities. I didn't have time to read the smaller print
delineating the various codes that were being violated, but the
numerous dots between the subsections were ominous enough. Could
Todd be hauled off to jail for being a slob? He had not shared my
childhood neighborhood, where refuse was a sign of status. He had
grown up here, in speckle-free suburbia. And it was beginning to
look as if he had learned nothing.

Carl betrayed his bourgeois roots when he
made a face at the weedy grass. Was he making an association
between this and his own depilated pole dancers? Body hair was
death to a career in the nude. His girls were properly maintained,
like good lawns.

"Cool, man," said Joe Dog, getting out and
stretching his polyester legs. "This is supermurgitroid. Could've
used this on the set of Abner. Only thing missing are the dead
soldiers."

"You can practice your slang on the
unemployment line," Carl said.

"I can dig it," Joe Dog answered.

"I cleaned up the beer bottles," Todd said
boastfully, as though he had done Mankind a favor out of all
proportion to what it deserved.

"Where's the sidewalk?" Carl fussed. "I hate
chiggers and snakes."

I had been about to strike out across the
lawn, but decided against it. I had been dealing with too many
snakes lately.

Todd guided us to the in-name-only sidewalk
and we gingerly made our way to the front door.

"You got something against lawnmowers?" Carl
asked, gingerly dodging a cross between a grasshopper and
Mothra.

When we entered I noted the smell was no
worse than my humble dump on Oregon Hill, but when Carl and Joe Dog
winced I realized Airwick was sorely lacking.

"You got something against vacuum cleaners?"
said Carl. Then he brightened. "Hey, I can offer you a French maid.
Actually, they come in pairs."

"Au pair girls?" Todd said, cocking an
eyebrow in my direction, as if I would instinctively understand the
joke—because we were twins, after all, and were supposed to be able
to read each others' minds. In the best Skunk tradition, I was
already concocting a nickname for him. Think of an eight-letter
word that begins with an F and ends with a D.

On the other hand, I had to admit Todd was
making me feel right at home. The wood and plaster weren't
saturated by age, a hundred years-worth of animal corpses weren't
hidden in the crawlspace and the walls didn't shudder with noise
from neighboring houses. But the junk was there, lumps immaculate
under a thick layer of dust that was like filtered oxygen to me,
but sent the other visitors into violent coughing fits.

"OK," said Carl, "but this doesn't prove
anything. You wouldn't be the first pig with money.

"You want some coffee?" Todd offered. Manners
come more naturally when you have gun to your head, especially when
the metaphor threatened to become a reality.

"I'll pass," said Carl.

"How about a beer?"

"What kind?"

"Milwaukee's Best."

Carl was taken aback. "You
are
broke..."

"How about you?" Todd asked Joe Dog, who was
scrutinizing a newspaper spread out on the musty carpet. He seemed
ready to squat and unload.

"Cowabunga!"

"That a 'yes' or a 'no'?" asked Todd.

He didn't ask me if I wanted anything, which
I found pretty rude but not unexpected. The only weapon I had was a
partial truth, which didn't go far towards encouraging hospitality.
He began searching out possible seating arrangements and was
beginning to toss a broken lamp off a settee when Carl raised a
hand to stop him.

"Why not sit out back? It's kind of stuffy in
here."

"Did Mom...did
your
mother..." I stuttered.

"Mom wasn't a neat freak," Todd shrugged.
There was no point in denying his swinish inheritance. The evidence
was overwhelming. Unless he admitted that Skunk was his father, he
had no birthright to fall back on as an excuse. I doubted he
brought many women to this guano pit. There was no sign of a
feminine hand attempting to put things right. It was a sobering
thought. The two of us living alone in our separate houses, moving
sluggishly through our dung heaps, unattached, unlovable, alone in
the universe. The big difference was that, whereas I looked
sorrowfully on my mess like a rat on a promontory, Todd took no
heed of neglected accountability. He possessed more of the Oregon
Hill spirit than I did. You could say there was more birth than
nurture in his makeup, but the same went for me. In all of Skunk's
troupe, I was the one who didn't belong—because I had a trace of
guilt. I didn't earn it. I was just guilty, because of who I was,
by virtue of my parentage.

And who might they be? My parents, I mean. As
we passed to the back of the house I scanned the clutter for framed
portraits or any other memorabilia that might identify Todd's
adoptive family. The only sign of literacy was a cheap plaque
hanging by a frayed string on the wall. It read: EROSION BEGINS
HERE. Finally, I asked.

"You have any pictures around here?"

"Of Mom and Dad?" Todd looked troubled, as if
I had asked him for a loaded gun. Was he afraid I would discover no
resemblance between him and his parents? Or worse, that he was his
father's spitting image? I favored neither Skunk nor my mother, so
it seemed quite possible that I might look at one of Todd's family
portraits and see...myself. If not literally myself, with a
pacifier jammed in my mouth, then at least the originals from which
Todd and I had been duplicated.

It didn't look like an answer was
forthcoming. When we walked out onto the back deck, Joe Dog whooped
and mounted a mop-topped hobby horse, his legs cracking up to his
chin as he rocked violently.

"Nature boy," Carl sighed. He turned to Todd.
"You have kids?"

"Hell no." He nodded at the hobby horse a
little shame-facedly, as though caught mistreating an animal. "That
was mine."

"And that swing over there?"

"Mine. I wouldn't try it, though. My
insurance...I don't have much in the way of liability."

Meaning Todd didn't have any insurance at
all, seeing as liability is nine-tenths of the law. The rusting
A-frame hulk of the swing set was more dangerous to Todd than to
his guests, since a lawsuit resulting from an injury would bring
down the house. In its current state, it might not be worth much,
but this half-acre was a gold mine. Joe Dog, tempted by Todd's
inferred dare, looked longingly at the swing. The Dogpatch
character would have leapt at the opportunity to daredevil among
the rusty seats and chains, but Schmuckalooza was more refined.

"Why haven't you junked it all?" I asked.

Todd shrugged. He had simply not gotten
around to it. For twenty years neither he nor his folks had not
gotten around to it. Todd defined a neat freak as someone who
rinsed out his coffee cup more than twice a year. A dark signal
coursed through my innermind. Anything that comes naturally must be
inherited. Neatness was the furthest thing from my mind because it
just wasn't in me. Slobility, too, could be an inherited trait.
This mess was of long standing. If Todd's mother was gone, when did
she go? The grass and weeds might be relatively recent, but unless
she had been gone for decades, she should have had plenty of time
to remove the aging swing set and basketball hoop and trampoline,
not to mention the Tonka toys littering the deck.

What was Elizabeth Neerson's background?
Where had she come from? Did she say 'tomato' or 'tomaato'? I began
to get a queasy feeling. I mean, in addition to the queasiness
attributable to being kidnapped for the second time by frontrank
goofballs.

Carl took a deep breath, then coughed. He had
been overly optimistic on the benefits of fresh air, neglecting to
take into account the toxic cloud of ragweed pollen.

"Listen—" Todd began, stopping when Carl held
up his hand.

"You're broke, I can see that. But you must
have some source of income. I figure you eat like the rest of us.
How do you afford it? Is there a trust?"

Todd turned beet red, exactly the same way I
did whenever confronted by an embarrassing question.

"Just a little bit," he said. "But it's only
enough to keep me going."

"I wouldn't want to steal the food out of
your mouth," said the mealy-mouthed club-owner. Then he nodded at
Joe Dog. "But you know, I have to feed my employees, and they
aren't so particular. Hell, dogs eat their own vomit."

Filing an employee complaint against a
slanderous boss was the furthest thing from Joe Dog's mind. He had
decided a trampoline was just the ticket for the aspiring beatnik.
Jumping off the hobby horse, he raced through the tall grass and
launched himself into the air. The rotten canvas broke and he
tottered onto the grass.

"Those things aren't safe," Carl belatedly
cautioned, and turned back to Todd. "You see what I mean? No sense.
Doesn't even know how to feed himself."

I smiled in disbelief, but Todd saw danger in
the joke. Carl required no excuse to rob him, but if pressed he
would supply one with as much merit as a razor blade in an
apple.

"You don't need me for this," I said, backing
towards the house.

"Don't make Dog chase you," said Carl. "He
gets riled whenever he's forced to break a sweat."

I'd seen some evidence that this was true and
stopped in my tracks. "You're after Todd, not me," I protested.

"In order to add two plus two, I need two,"
said Carl

While I struggled to winkle the logic out of
this, Todd chimed in:

"And in order to have an ass, you need two
half—"

"Be nice," Carl waggled. "Your life is in my
hands."

Ouch.

"Let me remind you of a few things," Carl
continued, "and maybe fill in the gaps for Mutt here."

"Mute," I said, wondering if it was Jeremy
who had given him my nickname, and at what point it had been
mangled.

"When Jeremy came to you for his share of the
Brinks money—"

"There's nothing Brinks about this place,"
Todd interrupted with some accuracy. "I told you, my father made a
ton with asbestos abatement. He had a contract with the state to
strip out the old buildings downtown."

"Mmm-hmm," Carl smiled.

"This Brinks business, Skunk,
everything—it all came out of the blue," said Todd. "I'd never
heard of any of it." He shot me a jaundiced look. "I never knew
anything about
him
until I met
Barbara and she told me."

"Mutual," I said, my disgust basting to a
golden wrath.

"Forget you," Todd shot back. "I don't think
Jeremy is my brother, either. I don't have any brothers or
sisters."

I held my peace on that one.

"Then why did you come to us for assistance?"
Carl smiled like a seasoned businessman who took to paid
assassination as a holiday lark.

"You can't have forgotten already," Todd
said. "It was only half a year ago."

"Really, it was that simple?"

Carl's tone was playful, as though he
remembered very well their first meeting. Why he should bother
stretching out the conversation with feigned ignorance eluded me.
Maybe he was having second thoughts about the free beer, no matter
how cheap.

It was fascinating to see Todd skate across a
range of expressions, because I was seeing (much to my
self-dissatisfaction) my own reaction to unpalatable subjects.
Neither one of us had a poker face, it seemed, and the topic at
hand roused him to ratlike fury. Did I really look like that
whenever I was (pardon the expression) beside myself? Did my face
narrow, my chin shrink and my eyes wobble in idiotic dementia? I
resolved to spend some practice time in front of the mirror. I
needed to hone my cool.