Wild Thing: A Novel (18 page)

“Son, you come back here, your easement’s going to be my foot up your ass,” Reggie says.

“That’s right, motherfucker,” Miguel says from over in the brush.

“Probably wanted pictures of the ref,” Reggie says, lighting a joint. He and I are on the porch of his cabin. After the departure of Michael Bennett of the Desert Eagle Agency or whoever he was, and my following him up the hill to get his license plate number, I stopped by Reggie’s cabin and asked him if he had a minute.

“Who
is
the ref?” I say.

“In good time.” He offers me the joint.

I rarely do drugs anymore, because as I’ve grown older I’ve become able to achieve the same states of emotional instability and poor decision-making skills without them, but neither have I quite gotten into the habit of turning them down. I drag deeply, and an artificially cheery assessment of my character and actions sets in almost immediately.

Why
don’t I do drugs anymore?

“I’ve got alpha-blockers, too, if you want some,” Reggie says. “For the other thing.”

“What other thing?” I say on the let-out.

“You know—the nightmares.”

I let that lie.

“Were you in the service?” Reggie says.

“No.”

“Too bad. They’ve got some cool things going on with PTSD
now at the VA. You know, I could get my doc to talk to you on the phone.”

“Reggie,” I say to him. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“With what?”

“With any of this. The tour.”

He laughs. “Do I look like someone who knows what he’s doing?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You do. You’ve got the only viable business in an economic wasteland. You’ve got friends. You’ve got enough juice to get someone like Tyson Grody to show up for your crazy-assed monster plan. So why do you
have
a crazy-assed monster plan?”

Reggie tucks the joint into the good side of his mouth to relight it. “I’m not gonna tell you the money doesn’t have anything to do with it. I wouldn’t mind getting out of here. Move to Cambodia, live on the beach. I’ve got some personal reasons, too, though.”

“Like what?”

“It’s something a friend of mine wanted to do.”

“You mean Chris Jr.?”

“You’ve heard of him.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I heard the monster hoax was his idea. I also heard you killed him.”

If it shakes Reggie up, he doesn’t show it. “Yeah, well,” he says, exhaling. “That’s what everybody thinks.”

“Did you?”

“No. I loved Chris Jr. He was like a little brother to me—if I could have had a little brother who was that much less fucked up than I was.”

“So why do people think you did?”

“It’s how I got this place.” He gestures out across the water.
With the glass lake reflecting a cutting-needle moon, it’s spectacular. The air is damp and thick with the sounds of a living environment: frogs or cicadas or something. Pikes fighting loons, for all I know.

“What happened to him?”

“No fucking idea,” Reggie says, handing off to me. “I was right here—inside—playing poker with Del and Miguel and another guy, who doesn’t work here anymore, and we heard the shots.”

“Chris Jr. was shot
here?
”

Reggie points. “Down there. On the pier. Chris Jr. and this other guy, a priest. We didn’t find them till the next day, though. We went outside when we heard the shots, but we couldn’t see anything, so we figured it was just some jackass shooting off drunk, or night hunting.”

So Chris Jr. was shot on the same pier the picture was taken on. With Reggie nearby.

Which means what? I can’t really see Del and Miguel risking felony homicide charges to help Reggie fake an alibi. It’s possible, but they’d need to really love whatever it is they do for him, or with him, or whatever—or else really love
him
. Most people will think twice about buying into a murder rap, particularly when it’s going to give someone they already know is capable of murder a reason to want
them
dead too.

But maybe they didn’t know they were doing it. With a decent scope, Reggie could have shot Chris Jr. and Father Podominick from right here at his cabin. Out the bathroom window or something, then hidden the rifle and come back to the game asking what that noise was.

“You have to understand,” Reggie says. “Chris Jr. didn’t live here. Christine didn’t want to, because of school for Autumn and all that, so the whole family lived in Ely. Chris didn’t even
tell her he was coming out here that night. Said he was going to Sears. He didn’t tell
us
either. Christine called here an hour or so after he was shot and asked if Chris had stopped by, but we didn’t think he had, so we said no. We still have no idea what he was doing out here. Father Podominick neither.”

“Did you notice
anything
that night?”

“Nope. Just the two shots. Police thought they came from out on the lake, or around the shore.”

“Did you hear a boat?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. Lot of people around here use electric motors, so they can sneak up on the fish. And
everybody’s
got a canoe.”

“Could someone have shot him from as far away as Ford?”

“I don’t know.
I
couldn’t have.”

Odd thing to say. “Is it possible one of Debbie Schneke’s Boys killed Chris Jr.?”

“No. She didn’t have those at the time.”

“Could she have done it herself?”

“Nah. Not Debbie. She wasn’t as bad back then as she is now.”

“Not even right after Benjy died?”

Reggie salutes me with the joint as he relights it. “You
have
done your homework, son. But no, I don’t think so. Obviously you can’t go killing a woman’s kid and expect her to be the same afterward. Benjy was a cool kid, too—I knew him because he was dating Autumn. He put up with all
kinds
of shit from us. But Debbie didn’t fully lose it till later on, and I think there were other factors involved when she did. I don’t really know, though. Her and me’d stopped dating by the time the kids died.”

I suddenly feel stoned. “You and Debbie Schneke were
dating?
”

“Oh, yeah. On and off for about six years. Way off, sometimes, but still. She really was a different person back then.”

As with every other part of this weirdness, I have no idea what to make of that. “Why didn’t you tell the people you wanted to come out here about Benjy and Autumn?” I say. “As a selling point, I mean. Why wasn’t it mentioned in the documentary?”

“Fuck, I would never exploit Autumn’s death for bullshit like that. I was crazy about that girl. I would have taken a bullet for her. Anyway, the documentary I didn’t really have anything to do with.”

“Except for sending it out.”

“Sure, there’s that. But making it was all Chris Jr.’s thing.”

“You weren’t part of the original hoax?”

“No. I knew about it, I guess, but I got the idea Chris Jr. wanted to do it on his own. Or maybe he just didn’t want
me
to be involved. He was thirty-seven or whatever. I’m sixty-two. I’d known his dad since before he was born—I’d been
living
here since Chris Jr. was around fifteen. I figured maybe he wanted a chance to try something all on his own for once.”

“And it worked out so well that now you’re trying it.”

Reggie shakes his head. “Part of why I’m trying it is
because
the whole thing went to hell. Like I say: most of it’s about the money. But not all of it. Something or somebody killed Autumn, then somebody shot Chris Jr. If doing this trip brings me face-to-face with whatever or whoever that was, it’ll be worth it, money or no money.” His eyes are wet. Both of them. “Hey, you want a Dr Pepper?”

“No, thanks.”

“I’m gonna have one.”

“Go ahead.”

When he comes back, I say “Reggie, is there any reason at all to think there’s actually a monster in White Lake?”

He looks surprised. “Sure there is. I wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.”

“Like what?”

“Well. For one thing, Chris Jr. thought there was. I know he did, because right before he died, he bought all this equipment to catch it—giant nets and hooks and stuff. Most of it showed up after he was gone, but it was serious stuff. He was loading up for
something
.”

“Okay. Any other reason?”

“Yeah,” Reggie says. “I’m not saying there necessarily is one in White Lake. But I have run into one of these fuckers before.”

Sang Do River, South Vietnam

Monday, 24 July 1967
^*

Reggie Trager slips on shell casings from a firefight two days ago as he races to the back rail of the
commandement
, one hand ripping at the buttons of his pants. He gets them down just as he gets his ass over the rail and explodes fluid into the already brown river. On the boat behind him, the freaky Ruff-Puffs all applaud.
^*

His intestines unclenched for the first time in hours, Reggie breathes deeply, inhaling thick, lead-tasting diesel smoke that makes him feel exactly like he’s doing a back flip over the gunwale. He instinctively jumps forward, smacking his face into the back of the wheelhouse. Lets himself slide partly down the wall—his cheek and palms are wet with sweat, even though he’s freezing—but not black out.

Reggie feels superfluous enough as it is. On this shitcan alone there are three other people who can do his job: the lieutenant, the
dai-uy
, and the coxswain. Everybody tries to learn everybody else’s job generally, in case there’s no one else left alive to do it, but comm and radar get special attention. Nobody wants to get stranded out here. The lieutenant and the
dai-uy
, at least, know more about radio and radar equipment than Reggie does.

Which isn’t saying much. Reggie’s been in-country for a month. He’s been out of high school for seven weeks, having upped voluntarily for reasons that now seem foggy but that he hopes were more than just wanting to live in a war movie. He does recall thinking that joining the Navy rather than the Army, with guaranteed electronics training, would probably land him a job in the radio shack of a five-thousand-man aircraft carrier, calling in artillery strikes with his feet up.

But that’s not what the job has turned out to be. The job has turned out to be comm engineer to a South Vietnamese Navy River Assault Group in the fucking
Cuu Long Giang
. Three weeks’ basic training at RTC Great Lakes—cut from eight weeks right before Reggie got there—then two days of “localized specialization training” onboard a destroyer docked in Saigon. Then this shit. In which twenty-five of the forty-two American RAG personnel based, like Reggie, at Vinh Long have been killed in action in the last three months.

Or else killed by dysentery. Reggie leans his full weight onto his face so he can wipe his palms dry on his fatigue cutoffs, then pulls himself upright against the back wall of the wheelhouse.

He turns around with his hands still raised and gets a cheer from the Ruff-Puffs in the trailing boat.

Three hours later the Ruff-Puffs are gone, dropped off in the jungle with their ARVN commanders and their solitary U.S. Army accompaniment, a dead-eyed “pacification officer” who didn’t say anything to anyone. Reggie’s in the wheelhouse, feeling a lot better. Still dizzy but not nearly so cold.