Soil (27 page)

37

It was a summer-lit fall afternoon, a rare cloudless day. The water was turning cold, the trees were tinting down to a slow yellow. Father and son were beside the river, soaking in the muddy wallow. They'd enjoyed intermittent sparks of deep camaraderie over the past couple of days, but they'd also begun to understand how they needed Sandy's overarching sense of purpose. Theirs was a kinship of universal inevitability, and they were starving some essential part of themselves by not having her here.

Jay began to suspect it might take only a drive into town, kidnapping her and bringing her back here to their lair. They'd both been wrong, and maybe there was only the joint fessing up to make things right with the Mizes once again. A muddy cleansing would reset their lives, wash away all the obsessions and regrets and mistrust, and bury them back in that simple love where they all first knew each other.

When Jay stood up to execute his plan, the ground beneath him gave way. He fell flat on his chest and began sliding toward the cliff. Jacob, splatting the earth with a firm stick, responded quickly by launching the stick out toward his dad, who grabbed it and steadied himself. He slowly wriggled and clawed his way inland, fearing that he and Jacob might both fall off into the river and be churned up under a ton of mud. It was a steep drop, guaranteed to cause serious injury. He reassured Jacob, instructing him to inch his way back toward dry land where Chipper stood, wagging his tail, a wrinkle of concern across his furry brow. The boy did as he was told, serious and enthralled, with no sense of fear or surrender.

Their hearts were racing by the time they'd pulled free of the pit. They stood shivering in their underwear, encased head to toe in a slick brown fudgy coating. “It's telling us to stay out now,” Jay said.

He knew it was vital to heed the wild cues. The whole world seemed to be telling him the same thing. The pasture and the front field, town and country both. So where did a man take his family to remain sane?

They walked a short ways upriver to get a better vantage on the wallow and noted the trench that had washed out underneath it, a scar running from the mud bowl all the way down to the water. One good storm and the whole thing would collapse in a mass wasting.

“Let's go,” he told Jacob, who needed to first stop and pee. Jay walked out ahead of him through the scrub and toward the clearing, yearning for a taste of sunny warmth to cure the chill that had taken up inside him, and that's when he heard Chipper growling, followed by a cry in the woods ahead. He thought at first that someone was in trouble. He walked out of the brush and looked around but didn't see anyone. It came again—“Hold it there! Show your hands!”

Jay turned to see a man in camouflage with a shotgun trained on him. Somehow he didn't flinch. His first thought was Jacob. He'd have to dive in front of the blast when the kid came tromping out of the woods and startled the man. He put his hands up and tried to whistle Chipper back from his sudden fit of insane yapping.

“What the shit!” the man called. “By my own eyes, you was dead. Right there in that river. What happened to your hand?”

Jay wiggled his digits. He dared not look back for Jacob, just silently willed the boy to hide, to stay in the woods or go back to the river. The madman came closer on crutches, disbelief or rage fueling his wild glare. He used one of the crutches to swat the furious pup away. His head cocked suspiciously, the gunman got right up close and his eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, showing his yellow niblet smile and paint-greased face. “It's you. Mize. The son of a bitch who shot my dog.”

Jay likewise recognized the man as the nosy passerby from the road, the camo truck, and Hilltop Grocery. Meeting him out here in the woods at gunpoint was more than a coincidence.

“Just the man I was looking for,” the stranger said. He seemed relieved, even overjoyed. “The sheriff's deputy knows all about you. I told him what you done. He's onto you, buddy. He's stringing you along, just waiting for you to fuck up. But I aint so patient.”

“Who? Which deputy?”

“Shoals,” the man said. “Let's go see him together. You can tell him what you did.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Jay demanded, frustrated. He didn't make the connection and could barely hear over the dog's piercing bay. He needed to keep up the distraction in case the boy appeared. “You'll have to explain what you think I've done.”

“My dog, you asshole!” The stranger spat at the ground.

“What did I do to your dog?” Jay yelled over the barking.

The stranger turned the gun on Chipper and let rip a thunderous round. The dog yelped, tumbled backward into the leaves, and lay still.

“That!” the woodsman cried in the new silence. “That's what you done. We're even now!”

An incendiary rage flared up inside Jay. He yelled at the man—“Why did you do that?”—and he hoped that it would be enough to stay the boy while he attempted to overcome and subdue this clearly deranged person who had limped into their midst and was too distraught and confused to not harm Jacob. No doubt he had heard the shot and the shouting and was hiding in the brush like a good boy.

“It hurts, don't it?” the man said, nudging Jay with the smoking gun barrel. “Now shut up and get moving.”

A cool head came over Jay, and he obeyed the gunman, marching forward, peeking back over his shoulder. He didn't see Jacob.

As they walked through the woods along the riverbank, he believed he
could handle this. The guy was on crutches and obviously unsound. At the right distance he could kick the crutches out and stomp the man's injured legs, wrestle the gun away. After that he could take it as far as he liked.

But the wiser thing would be to stall, let this play out and find out what the guy had seen, how much he knew or suspected. They walked on in silence, Jay having to slow his pace for the gimped kidnapper. Soon they came to a familiar bend, and the stranger leaned on the old picnic table, still upturned and wedged into the earth, to catch his breath.

Jay looked back for any signs that Jacob was following them.

“This is where it happened,” the stranger said. “This is where you murdered Virginia. You didn't know I was here, did you? Hiding right down there under the water in that clump of limbs. Of course, the river was higher then. But I seen you and what you did. Putting those fish back. Shooting my dog for no good reason. What the hell are you about, Mize?”

Jay couldn't imagine how it was possible that the man had been there. What was the likelihood of him stopping at this random spot on the river? But it explained the dog being there, and if he'd only been calmer and had stopped to look around, to take careful stock of the situation, he would have noticed the man in the river, spared his dog and Jacob's in turn. Maybe all of this could have been avoided.

“I apologize about your dog,” Jay said. “If you'd just showed yourself, I would have let it go. It aint wise to let wild dogs roam your property.”

“Yeah, but she wasn't wild,” the stranger said. “And this aint your property nohow.”

“It was a misunderstanding, that's all,” Jay said. “A dumb accident.”

“Well, your dumb accident is gonna cost you plenty,” the stranger replied. “Now shut the hell up and keep walking.”

They moved at a hobbled pace, out from the river and up into the woods until they came to a clearing, a field of high grass. They wandered around in a zigzag fashion, the gunman occasionally raising his keys and pressing the panic button.

Jay seized on this distraction and said, “Why do you have to take me in to the deputy? Can't we just settle this here between ourselves?”

“I was trying to show some mercy, fella. You don't want me to handle this my way.”

“Does he know what you did to that guy from Ohio?”

The woodsman got right up in Jay's face, jamming the gun barrel under his jaw. He smelled like swamp and wintergreen chew. “Just what in hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean you know about that missing guy from Ohio the deputy's been looking for, and he's going to be far more interested in knowing those details than in any dog of yours that I may or may not have killed.”

The woodsman tensed, his face working out the miscalculations of justice. He screwed the gun barrel tighter to Jay's neck. “Maybe then we don't make it into town.”

“Don't look like we will. You can't find your damn truck.”

“Look here, Mize. You better keep your mouth shut. It's already taken my soberest will to keep from blowing your head clean off.”

“Did you kill that guy?”

The woodsman stalled. Maybe he was trying to decide whether to spill his guts, or just trying to remember. He seemed lost in his own cruelty.

“He was already dead!” the woodsman barked, now prodding Jay in the ribs with the gun barrel. “Dumb-ass got caught in his own fishing line. It was wrapped around his wrist, tangled up in some limbs. He was trailing along behind it, hell, I thought it was a catfish caught on a trotline. Then I seen his hand there.” His eyes went dazed recalling it. Any minute now, Jay thought, he might be able to give the old guy the slip. “River was too high or the son of a bitch couldn't swim, one. Too stupid to untether hisself. All I did was lop off his hand with my machete. Set him free.”

“They found the hand in Bobby Waterman's field,” Jay said.

“And they won't never find the rest of him.”

“Why's that?” If the woodsman let on that he knew, Jay decided, he would
leap at him and take the gun away. He could make it look like a suicide. Or just drag him to the river, do him like his dog.

“Hell, he's probably out in the Gulf of Mexico, that was weeks ago. He's shark bait by now.”

In a momentary lapse, the stranger removed the gun barrel from Jay's ribs and tipped it up. Jay took advantage and grabbed the stock, pulling it toward him. The woodsman jerked the weapon back with his trigger hand, and the sudden explosion startled both men. The blast took off the woodsman's hat, along with the front cap of his skull. He stumbled backward, not falling, but his eyes became engorged and his mouth fell open, taking in great heaving gasps. It all happened in a fantastic instant. Jay was sure he hadn't touched the trigger, only the stock, but the man abandoned the weapon and it slid into Jay's arms, and then he was cradling it, clutching the fore end. With the other hand he reached out to help the man, who swatted him away. He leaned in to see if it was just a flesh wound, but there was a terrible hole and the man's frontal lobe was oozing out like cheesy baked cauliflower. He stumbled on a log and fell onto his back, arms outstretched as if he were clutching an invisible assailant by the lapels, and he reared up several times like he wanted to stand, his mouth wrenched open in dumb rictus, issuing a sad primal moan.

The man was done for, and whether out of mercy or fear, Jay clutched the weapon and went to finish the job. He ejected the shell and came up empty for another round. He bent down and patted the man's pockets and vest. The stranger's eyes went wild, his moan louder and wild with terror. Some untouched part of his brain must have realized what was going on and he thrashed out for the gun, as if he might turn it on Jay and take him along. Jay surrendered the gun, but there was no retribution for this. The man had done it to himself.

On his knees there, without his clothes or any weapon of his own, Jay was powerless to help, so he plowed his hands into the leaves and scraped up a handful of dirt, then rammed it into the old fool's mouth. He packed in another load and then another until the woodsman's eyes threatened to
burst out of his skull. The round, soil-crammed gob gave the woodsman an almost comical look, like a howling cartoon madman. He flailed and shook, his arms stretched out in a zombie reach, and he seemed about to explode until he lunged up in one final measure of defense and finally slumped over motionless in the grass.

38

Word had gotten back to the sheriff about Shoals's drunken high jinks at the Madrid precinct. His uncle insisted on a leave of absence, just a week or so to get himself sobered up and sorted out. The next afternoon he took Suzie-Q for a few days in the Delta, called in a favor with a guy he knew who had a duck camp close to Money. He didn't hunt, just lay up in one of the bunks and snoozed. Watched some TV, fished idly. There were four or five crazy hunters who stayed over that Saturday, and he drank with them, stayed up late telling stories.

They hunted Sunday morning and then the hunters returned to their lives and Shoals had the place pretty much to himself, except for an old black man who lived in a cabin nearby and kept the place up. He tried speaking to the man, who just waved and shuffled off. These Delta folks had a different code. Still a whiff of the feudal about the place.

“Making hamburgers tonight if you want one,” Shoals said after he cornered the man hosing off the mud porch.

“You liked to scared me, boss,” the man said. He was small and withered, hunching around in a pair of overalls and mud boots. He had a face chiseled by years and experience, a lot of it bad probably, but he kept a wise, childlike grin.

“You live around here?” Shoals asked.

“Down the road.”

“You like working here?”

“Don't know whether do or not,” the man said. “Hadn't studied on it too much. It's a job, glad to have it.”

“You wanna go for a ride in my car?” Shoals said.

“Who-wee, sure is pretty,” the man replied. “Bet you fetch some ladies in that there.”

“More than you know.”

“Feels good to have one or two fine things.”

The man had an honest laugh, aged and crackling, and an all-around admirable ease. “What's your name?” Shoals asked.

“Granger.”

“I'm Danny, good to know you.”

“Yessir, yessir.”

“I bet you seen em come and go.”

The man gave him a smile and a weighted look that said,
Oh,
yessir, more than
you
know
.

He asked the man again if he wanted to hang out or go do something, but Granger slyly evaded him, changed the subject. He was probably set in his old negro ways and didn't want the trouble of making conversation with a white man.

Shoals couldn't stand to be alone so he drove to Greendale and sat in a bar, struck up a conversation with the bar back, a shy and wiry black girl who moved with fetching grace. He admired her tiny body and full chest. He waited until she got off and they went and sat on the levee and tussled like naked wrestlers in the high dewy grass.

“Why you here?” she asked him.

“On vacation,” he replied. “I think I'm gonna have to whip a cop's ass when I get back.”

“How come?”

“Honor,” he said. “Men's stuff.”

He stayed until Tuesday. A new batch of hunters from up north were due in that afternoon, so he left after lunch. He'd hoped to say good-bye to Granger, but there was no sign of the old black man. He cruised the back roads nearby, angling for a view of the man out in front of his tar-paper house, maybe feeding dogs or hoeing a little patch of greens.

He stopped a woman walking on the side of the road and asked if she knew where Granger lived. She shot him a wary sidelong glance and shook her head.

Home was an hour and a half away. He couldn't say he felt rejuvenated, but a few days in the wild had taken the edge off. He went back to work with renewed enthusiasm. He was still committed to flying right and moving up in the department.

He went in to the office that afternoon and sat at his desk for the first time in a long while. He checked his phone and found a peculiar message from Leavenger—“I'm out here in Tockawah Bottom, bout to get straight with Mize. Just wanted you to be aware in case things go sour, it's on your conscience. A pitiful shame the citizens of this county have to resort to vigilante justice, but so be it. Hasta la vista, motherfucker!”

Shoals called him back but got no answer.

“Do my eyes deceive me?” asked Bynum, who moseyed in with a self-­satisfied air. “I thought you were on sabbatical, Danny.” He must have thought he had the sheriff gig all sewn up.

“I want no beef with you, Robbie,” Shoals replied. “We're on the same team.” He stood and offered his hand.

Bynum crimped his face and returned the shake.

“I'm gonna make up for my mistake,” said Shoals. “Just let me know if there's some legwork I can do for you.”

“Uh-huh, I know what kind of legwork you have in mind.”

“I'm serious, Robbie, now dammit!”

Bynum stopped and reconsidered him. “Okay, okay. We'll sit down tomorrow and figure out where we stand. You'll be here in the morning?”

“I can be here anytime you want,” Shoals assured him.

“Okay, then. Let's do nine thirty.”

“You got it,” said Shoals, clapping Bynum on the shoulder, burying the hatchet.

He called Leavenger again but got no answer and drove off toward east Bayard on a county road about five miles outside the city limits. He wheeled
into the gravel drive of Leavenger's ramshackle bungalow. His car was gone. Shoals rang the number again and it went straight to voice mail. He replayed the message Leavenger had left earlier. Had things gone sour? Maybe he'd pay Mize a visit too, just to be safe. Two missing persons in as many months, all in that neck of the woods—it painted a curious coincidence. The afternoon was waning. If he wanted to get out there before dark, he'd have to shag ass, maybe slip by the cabin and call some backup from the gun cabinet.

He hit the road again, thinking of cool old Granger and how nice it would have been to take the guy for a ride, maybe to spend a few days with this man, follow him out in the fields, hunt with him, learn his ancient ways. He thought maybe the old guy would take a modest salary to become his spiritual guide. Teach him to be that even-keeled, to harbor it all right there in your eyes. Everyone around here seemed to have a stick up their ass. He thought the islands might be a good sanctuary for him, someplace where your favor rose when your shirt came off. Someplace where wet, pretty, and naked were the norm, not the shame, not hidden away in dark basements.
So what if I saw your tits, don't let it ruin your life
. Maybe Granger would come along. He'd probably never set foot on an airplane or even seen a jet on the ground. The gift of a lifetime before he moved on to the old shotgun shack in the sky.