The Drifter

G. P. P
UTNAM
’
S
S
ONS

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by Nicholas Petrie

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-19413-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Petrie, Nicholas.

The drifter / Nicholas Petrie.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-399-17456-8

1. Veterans—Fiction. 2. Retribution—Fiction. 3. Wisconsin—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3616.E86645D75 2015 2015007436

813'.6—dc23

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

Caminante, no hay camino.

Se hace el camino por andar.

—A
NTONIO
M
ACHADO

Traveler, there is no path.

The path is made by
walking.

The Man in the Black Canvas Chore Coat

H
e walked into Harder’s Grange, announced by a chrome-plated bell mounted to the doorjamb. The faded black barn coat made him look bulky. It was mostly the coat. He wore a John Deere hat pulled down low, but there were no cameras. It was a farm-supply store in the middle of nowhere, like they all were.

He saw a chipped Formica service counter, a pot of overcooked coffee, and a few chairs for waiting customers and old-timers looking for company. He understood that most of these places served as a kind of social center for local farmers, whose lives were pretty solitary. He’d grown up on a farm himself, although not in this state.

Behind the counter was a weather-beaten sixtysomething guy in a red plaid dress shirt. He looked up at his only customer, then tucked the USDA brochure he was using as a bookmark into his paperback vampire novel.

The man in the coat set a pleasant expression on his face. “Morning,” he said.

“It definitely is,” said the counterman, a wide, cheerful smile stretching his wrinkles into a new topography. “And not a bad one at that. What can I do you for?”

“My mom just bought some property this side of Monroe,” said the man in the coat. “Off Highway Eleven. And she needs some fertilizer for her garden.”

“Son, you come to the right place. We got all kinds. What do you need?”

“I’ve been trying to get her to use manure, but she says she can’t stand the smell. She’s looking to plant a half-acre.”

The counterman whistled. “A half-acre? That’s some garden.”

“Well, she and my dad had six hundred acres of soybeans and corn in Bureau County, Illinois, so a half-acre isn’t much to her.” He shrugged. “She likes to keep busy since my dad died.”

The counterman nodded in sympathy.

“Anyway, with the farm she was using Prairie King, the 64-0-0. I believe two sacks would cover a half-acre, right?”

The counterman looked at him. He was on the far side of sixty, but his brown eyes were clear and focused.

This was always the moment, thought the man in the coat.

He’d told a good story.

He looked right. He sounded right.

But farming and the farm-supply business was local, and the counterman didn’t know his face, which counted for a lot.

Especially since 1995. And again since 2001.

Finally the counterman spoke. “Son, that’s ammonium nitrate,” he said. “I cain’t sell to just anyone, even if it is only a hundred pounds. We got rules about that kind of stuff. You got your yellow card?”

“Oh, yeah,” said the man in the coat, putting a sheepish look on his face. “Hang on, I got it right here.” He pulled out his wallet, a
worn-down ballistic nylon item with a camouflage pattern. Even the wallet had been carefully assembled to make a certain impression.

He pulled out a driver’s license and a laminated yellow ID showing that he was registered with the state to buy certain kinds of fertilizers and pesticides. The form was a single page. The application fee was $44. The counterfeit driver’s license had cost a lot more than that.

The counterman scrutinized both cards, looking from one to the other and back again.

“Looks good,” he said. “Nothing personal. And you’re only getting a hundred pounds, I know. But the state’s dead serious about it.” He pushed the cards across the counter to the man in the coat, then flashed a grin. “Wouldn’t want any of them goddamned socialists to get hold of this stuff.”

The man in the coat smiled.

“No, sir,” he said. “We surely wouldn’t.”

The counterman pecked the order into an antique computer and took payment in cash. He directed his customer around to the loading dock to pick up his fertilizer.

Ten minutes later, the man in the black canvas chore coat turned the old blue Ford pickup onto the county highway, headed northeast.

It was his second stop that day.

Three more before nightfall.

Right on
schedule.

T
here was a pit bull under the front porch and it didn’t want to come out.

Young Charlie Johnson said, “That dang dog’s been there for weeks, sir. It already ate up all the cats and dogs around here. I can’t even let my dang little brother out the front door no more.”

The hundred-year-old house sat on a narrow lot on the edge of a battered Milwaukee neighborhood that, like the house, had seen better days. It was early November, not warm, not even by Wisconsin standards. The leaves had already fallen from the skeletal trees that towered overhead.

But the sun was out, which counted for something. And the sky was a high, pale morning blue. Not a morning for static. Not at all.

Peter Ash said, “Just how big is this dog?”

Charlie shook his head. “Never seen it up close, sir, and never in daylight. But it’s awfully dang big, I can tell you that.”

“Didn’t you call animal control?”

“Oh, my mama called,” said Charlie. “Two men came, took one look under there, got right back in their truck and drove away.”

Charlie wore a school uniform, a light-blue permanent-press dress shirt, dark-blue polyester dress pants, and giant polished
black shoes on his oversized feet. He was the kind of skinny, big-eared, twelve-year-old kid who could eat six meals a day and still be hungry.

But his eyes were older than his years. They didn’t miss a thing.

He was watching Peter Ash now.

Peter sat on the closed lid of a wooden toolbox, his wide, knuckly hands on the work-worn knees of his carpenter’s jeans, peering through the narrow access hatch cut into the rotted pine slats enclosing the space under the porch. He had to admit the dog sounded big. He could hear it growling back there in the darkness. Like a tank engine on idle, only louder.

He had a .45 under the seat of his pickup, but he didn’t want to use it. It wasn’t the dog’s fault, not really. It was hungry and scared and alone, and all it had was its teeth.

On the other hand, Peter had told Charlie’s mother, Dinah, that he would fix the rotting supports beneath her ancient porch.

She hadn’t mentioned the dog.

Peter really couldn’t blame her.

Her husband had killed himself.

And it was Peter’s fault.

—

Peter was lean and rangy, muscle and bone, nothing extra. His long face was angular, the tips of his ears slightly pointed, his dark hair the unruly shag of a buzz cut grown wild. He had the thoughtful eyes of a werewolf a week before the change.

Some part of him was always in motion—even now, sitting on that toolbox, peering under that porch, his knee bobbed in time to some interior metronome that never ceased.

He’d fought two wars over eight years, with more deployments
than he cared to remember. The tip of the spear. He’d be thirty-one in January.

As he bent to look through the narrow access hatch under the porch, he could feel the white static fizz and pop at the base of his skull. That was his name for the fine-grained sensation he lived with now, the white static. A vague crackling unease, a dissonant noise at the edge of hearing. It wasn’t quite uncomfortable, not yet. The static was just reminding him that it didn’t want him to go inside.

Peter knew it would get worse before he was done.

So he might as well get to it.

The space under the porch was about three feet high. Maybe twelve feet wide and twelve deep, with a dirt floor. About the size of four freshly dug graves, laid sideways. The smell was rank, worse than a sergeant’s feet after two months in a combat outpost. But not as bad as a two-week-old corpse.

Light trickled in through the slatted sides of the porch, but shadows shrouded the far corner, some kind of cast-off crap back there. And that growl he could just about feel through the soles of his boots.

It would be good to do this without being chewed on too much.

He went out to his truck and found a cordless trouble light, some good rope, and a length of old handrail. White oak, an inch and three-quarters thick, maybe eighteen inches long. Nice and solid in the hand. Which was a help when you were contemplating something spectacularly stupid.

Serenaded by the growls from the crawl space, he sat down on the toolbox and took out his knife while young Charlie Johnson watched.

Not that Peter wanted an audience. This certainly could get ugly.

“Don’t you have someplace to go, Charlie? School or something?”

Charlie glanced at a cheap black digital watch strapped to his skinny wrist. “No, sir,” he said. “Not yet I don’t.”

Peter just shook his head. He didn’t like it, but he understood. He figured he wasn’t that far from twelve years old himself.

He cut three short lengths from his rope and left the remainder long, ten or twelve feet. Tied one end of a short piece of rope tight to each end of the oak rail. Looped the last short rope and the remainder through his belt a single time, so he could get at it quickly.

Then he looked up at Charlie again. “You better get out of here, kid. If this goes bad, you don’t want to be around.”

Charlie said, “I’m not a dang kid.
Sir.
I’m the man of the family.” He reached inside the door, brought out an aluminum baseball bat, and demonstrated his swing. “That’s my dang porch. My little brother, too. I ain’t going nowhere.”

Charlie’s dad always had the same look behind the Humvee’s .50 turret gun. Eyes wide open and ready for trouble. Daring any motherfucker to pop up with an RPG or Kalashnikov or whatever. But when his wife, Dinah, sent cookies, Big Jimmy Johnson—known inevitably to the platoon’s jokers as Big Johnson, or just plain Big—was always the last to eat one.

Peter missed him.

He missed them all. The dead and the living.

He said, “Okay, Charlie. I can respect that.” He put his eyes on the boy and held them there. “But if that dog gets loose you get your butt in that house, you hear me? And if you hit me with that bat I’m going to be seriously pissed.”

“Yessir.” Charlie nodded. “Can’t promise anything, sir. But I’ll do my best.”

Peter smiled to himself. At least the kid was honest.

After that there was nothing more to do but lean back and kick out the slats on one side of the porch, letting in more daylight. The space was still small. The tank engine in the shadows got louder. But no sign of the dog. Must be lurking in that trash pile in the far corner.

Not that it mattered. He wasn’t turning away from the challenge. He was just planning how to succeed.

The familiar taste filled his mouth, a coppery flavor, like blood. He felt the adrenaline lift and carry him forward. It was similar to the static, rising. The body’s preparation for fight or flight. It was useful.

He peered under the porch, and the static rose higher still. The static didn’t care about the snarling dog. It cared about the enclosure. It jangled his nerves, raced his heart, tightened his chest, and generally clamored for his attention. It wanted him to stay outside in the open air, in the daylight.

Breathing deeply, Peter took the piece of oak and banged it on the wood frame of the porch. It rang like a primitive musical instrument.

Despite everything, he was smiling.

“Hey, dog,” he called into the darkness. “Watch your ass, I’m coming in!”

And in he went, headfirst on his elbows and knees, the stick in one hand and the trouble light in the other.

What, you want to live forever?

—

It was dark and musty under the porch, the smell of weeds and forgotten things, with an animal stink on top. Not a dog smell, but something wilder. Something feral. The smell of the monsters in the oldest of fairy tales, the ones where the monsters sometimes won.

Narrow bars of late-autumn sunshine slanted through the gaps and made it hard to read the space. The dim yellow pool cast by his trouble light wasn’t much help. The debris pile in the back corner looked more substantial from this vantage point. There was all kinds of crap in there. Carpet scraps, boxes, old lumber. The splintered bones of missing mailmen.

The growl might have come from anywhere. It seemed to vibrate up through the soil. Peter’s little piece of handrail and a few thin ropes didn’t seem like much. It would be smart to beat a tactical retreat, get the hell out of there, and return with a shotgun. Or a grenade launcher.

But he didn’t.

He kept moving forward on his elbows and knees, white sparks flaring high. Stick in one hand, light in the other. Alive, alive. I am alive.

“Here, doggy. Who’s a good doggy?”

—

The animal waited until Peter was most of the way inside.

Then it came out of hiding in a snarling hurry, teeth flashing white in the darkness. It was big.

Fuck, it was huge and fast and coming right for Peter’s head.

When those big jaws opened to tear his face off, Peter reached forward at speed and got that piece of hard oak jammed in there tight, ropes trailing. Now the jaws couldn’t snap shut, and couldn’t open farther.

The dog, confused, reversed course and tried to spit out the stick. It would use its paws in a moment. Peter went sideways quick and crablike, releasing the stick with one hand long enough to get his arm wrapped around the dog’s heavy neck. Caught up the other end of the stick again and trapped it hard in the dog’s jaw. Then
with the stick as a lever and his arm as the fulcrum, he threw the dog onto its side and laid his weight on its chest, holding the animal to the ground.

Big dang dog is right, Charlie.

Hundred and forty, hundred and fifty pounds. At least.

The dog went silent. Conserving its energy to escape, to get rid of this weight, white eyes rolled back, thrashing and fighting with all of its considerable muscle and will.

But Peter weighed almost two hundred pounds himself, and he was smarter than the dog. He hoped.

His initial plan, if you want to call it that, had been to tie the ropes around the dog’s neck to keep the stick in place while holding the dog down with his body.

Not much of a plan, he had to admit now. The dog didn’t seem to care much for it, either, still throwing around its big bullet-shaped head, lips curled in a silent snarl, spit flying everywhere.

And it stank like holy hell. Like fear and rage and shit and death, all wrapped up into one horrible reek that made Peter’s eyes water and his sinuses clear.

The stink wouldn’t eat his face the way this dog wanted to.

What Peter needed was a third hand.

But Charlie was just twelve. And he was wearing his school clothes. And he was Jimmy’s oldest boy. That family had enough damage done.

So Peter was on his own under that porch.

He moved his leg up slowly, carefully, until his knee was on the dog’s shoulder, then its neck. He bore down. He didn’t want to hurt the animal, but he sure as hell didn’t want those bone-cracking teeth to get free, either. The dog’s back legs scrabbled in the dirt, trying to get itself out of the situation, but Peter was too heavy.

“Hey, dog,” said Peter in a calm voice. “What’s your name?”

The dog scrabbled with its long nails, but its big bullet-shaped head was caught now between the pressure of the stick and the weight of the man’s knee.

“Somebody probably called you Fang or Spike or something, didn’t they?” asked Peter gently, remembering how his father had talked to the horses. A nice calm, conversational tone. The way Jimmy had talked to any in-country local who didn’t speak English. “But you’re not a mean dog, are you? No, you’re a nice puppy. A good puppy. Your name should be Daisy. Or Cupcake.”

The dog’s eyes showed white in the semidark of the crawl space, and it was panting hard, its great chest heaving. Its legs slowed their scrabbling in the dirt as the man’s deep voice worked its way through the fury and panic. Finally it stopped struggling, and the long tongue lolled out between the murderous teeth. Man and beast lay in the dirt together and caught their breath.

“Uh, sir, you okay in there?” Charlie’s voice floated under the porch.

“Never better,” said Peter, keeping his voice low and even. The dog panted, but the eye was staring at Peter’s face.

“So . . .” said Charlie.

“Kid. Give me a minute, okay?”

Peter still held the ends of the stick in his hands. Focused despite the static. He had a few minutes, no more. He worked his hands out to the ropes and slid the knots in close to the dog’s jaws.

The dog began to growl again.

Peter could feel the vibrations in his own chest, that tank engine revving slow. It was like lying on a vibrating bed in a cheap motel, but with teeth.

The eye stared at him, waiting.

Waiting for the man to make a mistake.

With the ropes in his hands, Peter carefully crossed them over
the bone-crushing jaws, then wrapped them under, over and under, again and again. Snug but not tight, trapping that stick in there like some kind of hillbilly art project. Then he carefully tied the ends in a series of half hitches, ending in a square knot. Super-duper-double-extra-secure.

The remaining long and short ropes were still tucked into his belt. He tied the long rope around the dog’s neck as a collar and leash. He shifted his weight, turned to the hind end with the short rope, and tied its back legs together.

Without allowing himself to think about it, he rolled off the dog and grabbed the rope at the hind legs, then reversed out of the crawl space, pulling the scrabbling dog behind him.

“Sweet holy Jesus,” said Charlie, dancing backward in his polished shoes as Peter and the snarling hog-tied animal emerged from the crawl space and into the light. “That’s one damn Jesus big goddamn dog.”

Peter felt the open air and high blue sky like a balm.

—

It took a few minutes to get Charlie to put down the baseball bat, but he was fine by the time Peter tied the leash off to a tree, double-checking the knots, then checking them again. Finally he cut the rope from the rear legs and stood away while the dog leaped, trembling, to its feet, ran to the ten-foot limit of the leash, and turned to growl at the humans.

“He sure is ugly,” said Charlie. “And he smells real bad, too.”