3 A Brewski for the Old Man (17 page)

“I’m going,” I yelled to the madwoman. I pointed a finger down at Lacey. “But you better call me with details.”

Hunched over in misery and hugging herself, Lacey nodded her head in agreement.

I opened the door and Rena fell into the room, her momentum taking her over to the bed where Lacey sat.

“Great. This is a good time for a mother and daughter chat,” I said. “Tell your mother all about it or I will, Lacey.” I headed for the front door, righteous indignation propelling me along at a trot. Then again I wanted to be gone before any police cars showed up. I didn’t go far, just around the block before I pulled over to the curb and started searching the truck. If I found the gun and turned it in I was sure it would go a whole lot better for me. I searched everywhere — under the seats, behind the seats, glove compartment and every possible combination; it wasn’t there. No gun. I called Lacey.

“It isn’t in the truck,” I told her. “I want to know everything that happened and I want to know it now. You took the gun into the building, right?”

She hesitated, trying to find a way out, but finally she whispered, “Yes. The gun was under the bar. I took it with me in case...I took it with me.”

“Did you take it out of the truck?”

“Yes,” barely audible but an affirmation.

“Did you take it into the building?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bring it out of the building?” I could hear her tattered sobs but my sympathy was all used up. It was my own ass I was worried about now. “What did you do with it?”

“I just don’t remember what I did,” she choked out.

She was lying. I knew that. But what was she lying about.

“Did you shoot Ray John? Surely, you remember that?”

“No, you have to believe me. I didn’t kill him.” Before my mouth opened to tell her it was a jury she had to worry about, my brain flashed on a picture of her bandaged arm. I didn’t want to push her over an edge she was already teetering on. “Have you talked to your mother?”

“She won’t listen. I tried again but she got up and left the room. She went into her bedroom and closed the door.” More sobbing before she choked out, “I think she hates me.”

I took a deep breath and said, “That isn’t true. Your mom is upset and not thinking straight. She has to deal with Ray John’s death and also with what he did to you. Sooner or later she’s going to have to deal with that; at the moment she’s in shock and denying the whole thing. But it’s you I’m worried about. Lacey, you have to promise me you won’t do anything foolish, promise?” I waited. “Lacey?”

At last it came. “Okay.” The words were faint and the commitment was weak.

“No cutting. Promise?”

“Yes.”

But could I believe her? In the distance came to the sound of a siren. I shivered in the hot sun.

Back at the Sunset things didn’t get better. I parked in the alley and was coming out into the sun as Skip was lifting his trunk lid. Something in his body language told me to pay attention, told me he was up to something he didn’t want seen. I stayed in the shadows and then quietly walked forward as he bent and took two bottles out of his rolled-up jacket and tucked them away in the trunk, shoving them deep in the corner under some beach towels.

“What’s this?” I asked, but I knew exactly what it was. It was the same old, same old.

He started at my voice and swung to face me with the look of a husband caught with a pack of Trojans by a wife who’d had a hysterectomy. “Nothing, nothing,” he said.

I lifted the towels off a bottle of Canadian Club and a bottle of Glenlivet. “We don’t give out samples, Skip.”

“I…I…just…I was borrowing a couple of bottles. I’ll pay you back.”

“Too right, you will,” I told him. I pointed at the bottles.

“Bring them.” I headed for the door. He’d picked a really bad day for this.

Thirteen minutes later, Skip left without his back pay. I figured he’d probably stolen more than that from me already. He was just lucky I hadn’t turned him over to Miguel. Miguel would have diced him and sliced him and deep-fried him for lunch. Nobody messed with me with Miguel around.

So there I was, working the bar until I could replace Skip. I needed to do that fast, but I’d already spent an hour calling people without any luck. Something told me I wasn’t going to have a whole lot of time to spend at the Sunset over the next few weeks. Until someone new came along, I was it. But being behind the bar wasn’t really a hardship for me. I love bars, the easy companionship and the quick exchanges. Nobody comes into a bar who doesn’t want to be there.

Styles came in about eight. After I told Styles about Skip, I filled him in on Rena and her belief that I was responsible for Ray John’s death, “She’s crazy with grief.” What I didn’t tell him was Lacey had driven out to the Preserves in my truck, taking along my gun. I intended to tell him everything but somehow I just couldn’t get it out. Blame it on pulling pints and mixing margaritas. It’s hard to start a serious conversation over a blender.

“I have to interview mother and daughter again tomorrow,”

Styles said, watching the beer he was sloshing around in his glass. This wasn’t the Styles I knew, capable and in charge. This guy was going through the motions and just putting one foot in front of the other. A wrecked love life can do that to you.

“Are you going to tell Rena about the abuse?”

“Yup.”

“Maybe you can make her believe it. She won’t listen to anything I have to say and doesn’t believe Lacey.”

“We’ve found two other mothers with daughters. You aren’t the only one she has to believe.” “And no one did anything?”

He gave me a look that made me sorry I’d asked. A guy down the bar was waving his glass at me. I set a menu down in front of Styles and went to fill some orders.

When I came back he told me about Uncle Ziggy. “That fire was set all right. He tried to stop them and got hit. My bet is our arsonists are already over the border into Georgia and headed north.”

“So you don’t think they’re going to be caught?”

“Nope. They likely came down here to do the job, collected their money and left within the hour.”

“Uncle Ziggy told you they had Ohio plates?”

“Yeah, that’s why I figure they’ve left Florida.” He pushed his half-finished glass away. “Bad guys who’ve moved on.” “So no way of knowing who paid them?” He lifted his shoulders. “We’ll keep looking but there’s not much to go on.”

A red flash went off in my head. I threw down the bar cloth I was holding and signaled Maxine that I was taking a time-out. I was so mad that I’d probably kill someone if I stayed.

Tears running down my cheeks, I went past the restrooms and out the exit door at the end of the hall. I looped the chain that hangs from the door handle over the railing so the door wouldn’t automatically close and lock me out on the steel grating over the alley. I stood there and swore into the night.

If I’d known where to find those guys, even if it was a thousand miles away, I’d have taken a gun, got in my truck and gone to find them. The injustice of this happening to Uncle Zig and no one ever paying was making me crazy. I don’t know, but it seemed that people like us just never win, never catch a break. Man, but I wanted to kill someone. Marley was right, I shouldn’t have a weapon. My self-control was almost non-existent. And then there was Rena. Being blamed for something I didn’t do already had me burning without this.

“You all right?” Styles moved through the light spilling out from hall to the shadows beyond.

“Crazy, that’s how I am. This just isn’t right.” He reached out to touch me, hesitated, and lowered his hand. “Let it go.”

I gave a harsh huff of laughter, wanting to kick him off the grating. “Go away.”

He braced his elbows on the top rail and leaned out over the alley below. “Sometimes things just aren’t fair. Don’t let it eat you up.”

“Jesus.” I shot away from the railing, jerking the chain loose from the rail as I went. I pulled the door closed behind me, locking him out on the exit. For one second I felt better, but it wasn’t good enough. I went to my office and called Tully. Something told me that my old man hadn’t given up yet.

At ten o’clock the next morning I slid into the cab of my dad’s truck. The air conditioning had given up long ago so the windows were cranked down and debris was blowing around the cab as we headed out of Jacaranda. It was the perfect day for a road trip, high seventies, sun shining and a breeze blowing.

At I-95 we headed north towards Sarasota, but I wasn’t at all sure we’d get where we were heading. At seventy miles an hour the pickup shook and bucked and rattled; hard to believe that every bolt and every connection didn’t spring loose in the washing-machine motion of the engine. Tully was unconcerned. Slumped against the door, his arm out the window and his hand resting on the mirror, he steered with two fingers. Not a worry in the world.

When we turned off the freeway onto a county road, the truck hit a pothole and the glove compartment flopped open. Stuff began to migrate out. I shoved it back in and slammed the little door shut. Another pothole brought more of the same.

“What makes you so sure they’ll be there?” I asked, slamming the glove compartment shut for the third time.

“Checked everywhere else. If they’re still around they won’t waste money on a motel when they’ve got a camper; ’sides, these aren’t the kind of guys who are going to be real social.”

I planted my feet on the glove compartment and looked out the window as the world changed from walled and gated communities, with cute names like Quail Run, to open fields with long-horned cattle. White cattle egrets rode the backs of the beef, picking off vermin.

The Osacola State Park is about thirty-five miles inland from the gulf. When it was set up back in the twenties it must have seemed that development would never reach this sixty-three square miles of primitive nature, but every year expansion crept closer and closer. “I remember when we used to fish out here,” I said.

“Yeah, ’til you hit that girly stage and didn’t want to do any of the good stuff.”

It was true. At about eleven or twelve I decided that I wasn’t doing any of the things Tully wanted to do anymore. They always involved yucky dead things, hours without seeing a proper bathroom and lots of beer. Well, beer for him. He never would let me try it no matter how hard I whined.

I gave up baseball caps for boys and we hadn’t seen much of each other after that. In my twenties I’d sometimes drift by his pork roast for an hour but that was pretty much the extent of our togetherness.

“I used to hunt with my daddy out here,” Tully said. “Back in the old days when we could still hunt.”

I half-expected him to go off on a rant about the government ruining his world. Instead he said, “We used to hunt with hounds.” He looked over at me to see if I was even mildly interested before he went on.

“Daddy would build a fire and pretty soon four or five other guys would arrive with their dogs, all whining and keening. What a racket. They’d all be in cages on the backs of the pickups, anxious for the hunt. Had to keep them caged or they’d be over the tailgate and gone ’fore you was ready. Every man had an old dog, a dog that knew what’s what, and a young dog, eager and strong, willing to learn. And lots had a dog in-between. There’d be a dozen dogs or more, yapping and calling to each other.” He turned to me and smiled. “The old stirrings, primitive and alive in man and beast, screaming in the blood. We set them loose and they’d spread out, noses to the ground casting back and forth for a scent. Then they’d find one and be gone. But we could still hear them. Knew exactly where they were and what was happening.

“Man and boy, we all took a seat around the fire, waiting and listening. There’d be iced tea and homemade hooch and sandwiches Grandma packed. We’d talk, lazy and rambling, not important, but mostly we just listened to the calling of the dogs, back and forth, telling each other what they’d found. Each man knew his dog, knew if he was in the lead, knew if his dog had caught a good strong scent. It was a good thing to have the lead dog, the dog baying the loudest and holding the scent of game in his nose. We’d sit there with the smell of the fire and the earth and hear the sound change, know they’d treed something. Or we’d hear something die. Can’t mistake the scream of death.”

He fell silent while I held my breath, afraid of breaking the thread of his memory.

“Sometimes all the game went to ground. After ’bout an hour the men would walk to their pickups and lean on their horns, calling the dogs in. Then they’d load them up and we’d go home.”

He drove in silence.

“Nobody has hounds anymore.” His voice was sad for something lost.

“Probably ’cause you can’t keep them home.”

“That’s true; you can’t change a hound’s nature. It needs to hunt. If you want a lap dog don’t get a hound. He ain’t good but for one thing…hunting. He wants to be out and gone, just put his nose down and follow where it leads, no lying at his master’s feet for him. Civilization will always fight nature, man or dog. Some just don’t have it in them to settle. And when you teach a dog to hunt, to kill, you can’t take him home and say forget all that, Dog, just sit out in the backyard and be quiet…damn, that’s just so crazy. All anyone wants from a dog anymore is that he’s quiet and housebroke. Piss on that!” I laughed. “You never settled, did you?”

“Gotta be some excitement in life.”

“Well, you always seemed to find it.”

“The only way to live is like a dog.” He took his hand off the wheel, stretching it out to the windshield. “Body stretched out, searching, straining to win the prize.” His old truck wandered onto the shoulder and he grabbed the wheel and fought it back from the edge of the tar.

“You’re crazy,” I told him. “You do know that, don’t you?” He grinned at me. “Yup. But that doesn’t mean what I say ain’t true.”

I looked away from him. The ditches were filled with arrowroot and pickleweed and six inches of water left over from the rains in the first two weeks of September. We’d have about another few weeks of rain and then we’d start into the dry season, months without a drop of moisture and the green of the swamps would turn into dusty brown prairie grass.

Tully slowed. Slash pines grew up to the edges of the ditches. We pulled into the park entrance and stopped before the barrier. Heat quickly filled the cab. A lady in a brown uniform came out to the pickup with a handful of papers. Tully handed over five dollars for the entrance fee and said, “Say, we got some friends from Ohio that might be staying here. They got a pickup with a cap on the back and Ohio plates. Have you seen them?”

“I don’t remember seeing them but you won’t have any trouble finding them if they’re here. There’s only one campsite open and not many visitors. This is the quiet time of the year.”

“Thanks,” Tully said, handing me the brochures. I dropped them on the floor with the rest of the garbage. The first pothole we hit, the glove compartment popped open and a manual slid out to join the brochures. I left it there.

A hundred yards past the entrance we came upon the first creek. Halfway across the wooden trestle bridge, Tully stopped so we could look down the broad lazy waterway with its flat mudbanks dotted with gators snoozing in the sun. Egrets and shorebirds, ignoring the giant reptiles, fed at the edge of the water. A log half-sunk in the mud was covered with turtles. Must have been over twenty of them all jumbled together.

I took a deep breath, sucking in the crystal air. It was a good day to be alive and a good place to be living. The truck jiggled across the bridge and down along a narrow road through miles of grass as high as my shoulders before entering a green tunnel through deep woods.

The park is a patchwork of grass prairies, hammocks and swamp. The whole thing, hundreds of thousands of acres, is cut with endless twisting waterways that disappear in grass beds. The creek or river, or whatever waterway you’re following, just stops. It just doesn’t exist anymore and now there’s only grass in front of your canoe. You have to search through the grasses growing in shallow water for the channel, finding it and losing it and turning back on yourself. Even when you follow the stream through the palmetto and trees, matted with climbing vines, making your way under low hanging trees, you can get lost. The edges of the bank, covered with clinging plants, creep out into the water, hindering your passing. Criss-crossing and twisting, the streams lead to places only a few people can make their way through, my daddy being one of them.

Most people never venture off the five miles of road going to Osacola Lake, but there are also two smaller lakes in the park that can only be accessed by water — a long torturous paddle that Tully and I had made twenty years before.

Running off the main roads are dozens of forestry tracks, firebreaks and dead ends. These roads aren’t maintained and are only there for emergencies. Poor maintenance is probably a way to keep people out of the real wilderness. As Tully drove I studied the map on the back of one of the brochures, trying to orient myself again, but I had no clear memory of how we’d canoed from one part of the park to another.

“It says here that there are five camp areas. Did the warden say only one was open?”

“Yup. But we ain’t going to find them in the one that’s open.” He pulled over and took the map from my hand.

“Let’s check out the main campground just to be sure,” I told him. “It’s on the way to the lake.”

“If you like,” mild and easy, not at all like my old man. Who the hell was this guy and what had he done with the real Tully Jenkins?

The main campground, with large log washhouses and electricity to every site, was nearly to Lake Osacola. We pulled in and drove through the winding roads. Fewer than a dozen sites — of the fifty or sixty spread out along the two- or three-mile trek — were taken. None of the rigs were from Ohio. Tully drove slowly, leaning out the opened window and resting his right wrist on top of the wheel to steer the truck. He studied each rig real carefully and didn’t say, “Told you so,” when there were no Ohio plates.

We went up to the lake where there’s a large lodge that houses conference rooms, a snack bar, restaurant and gift shop. You can also buy tickets for airboat rides and rent canoes or launch your boat, as long as it has an electric motor — no motor boats allowed. There were only three cars in the parking lot and they probably belonged to the employees or the volunteers who kept the park running. September in Florida is quiet.

We cruised through the parking lot that circled the building. No Ohio plates.

“Let’s check out those other campgrounds,” Tully said.

“I remember those other campgrounds,” I told Tully. “Pretty primitive, no electric or flush toilets.”

“Some people can get along without those things.”

“Not me.”

“Good thing you’ve got such a fancy man then.” He reached out and turned on the radio. His acknowledgment of my living arrangement seemed to be as far as this conversation was going. That was fine with me. I’d rather listen to Gretchen Wilson singing about where she bought her underwear.

Three miles north of the lake we pulled off the road at the first campground. A chain strung across in front of us barred the way. We got out of the truck. Tully went left and I went right, walking around the posts holding up the chain. We walked down the grass-covered road about twenty yards until we came to a low place in the road covered with water.

“No one has come here in a while,” he said. “The whole site is probably still under water. It’ll be another month before it dries out enough to use.” We started back to the truck.

The next two campgrounds weren’t chained off, but they were empty and overgrown when we drove in and looked around. One was set deep in the woods, the other was on a hammock surrounded by prairie grasses. I started to relax, sure that Tully had guessed wrong and we weren’t going to find the Ohio plates. Tully grew quieter.

The last campground, down a gravel-covered track, was also barricaded at the road by a chain. Tully didn’t stop. He drove about a hundred yards past before he pulled over. “Two ways of doing it. Woods aren’t too thick. We can make our way through there and try and stay out of sight. The other way is we just walk in there like we belong. Just like anyone would.”

“Probably best just to walk straight in,” I offered. “If we walk through the swamp and we get lost in there we’ll never find our way out.”