Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070) (16 page)

“You know Peachy Morris,” he began.

Stranahan sat down on the cut bank where Sam's driftboat was tied off and nodded. Morris was a fellow guide he'd met a couple times on the water.

“Peachy couldn't catch the clap in Copenhagen, but not for lack of trying if you get my drift. I don't know what it is about that boy, whether he can lick his eyebrows or just 'cause he's such good people, but any woman plants her cheeks on the casting chair leaves a snail trail. Hell, half the
guys
who fish with him are ready to go Brokeback Mountain before the day's over. You pass by Peachy's driftboat tied up along the river and no Peachy, no client, you know he's back in the bushes with his waders rolled down to the ankles. ‘Restin' the trout,' he calls its. You drift by, nod to yourself—old Peachy's resting the trout. I mean you gotta hand it to the boy . . . Hey, you wanna split a beer, I only got one left.”

Stranahan said sure. This was Sam. Sometimes you didn't know where he was going or what the point was once you got there, but it was never less than an interesting ride.

Sam fished a Silver Bullet from the cooler in his driftboat, popped the tab, and handed it over. “That dude ranch up Willow Creek, the Double D? The one out of Pony, you pass the gate on the way up to the Tobacco Roots? There's this teachers' convention there, goes on all this week. The ranch runs a guide service for the guests, Peachy and some other guy. Peachy has a cabin there. These teachers, you figure like ninety percent of them are women trapped in a room with a bunch'a little monsters nine months of the year, putting dinner on the table for the old man who doesn't appreciate 'em, run ragged by a couple brats of her own, the ranch must be like Vegas—‘What goes on at the Double D stays at the Double D.' Peachy gets so much action he says he has to eat liver and oysters for a month just so he can build up his stamina.”

Sam took the half beer Stranahan held out and knocked it down in one swallow. He crumpled the can in his fist and tossed it into his boat.

“So yesterday he's going to float this chick from the convention, like forty years old, a cougar. Harriet with some Kraut last name. She's like an annual fuck, comes every summer, talks about her family, hauls Peachy's ashes like she's shaking his hand—casual about it, a very European lady. So yesterday she's booked him to float from MacAtee to Varney. Peachy says she's a good fly fisherman for a chick, casts a candy-cane line. He pulls up to her cabin towing his driftboat and they're rigging rods when this older guy walks up and asks what they're biting on. They talk a bit and the man asks if he can go with them. Peachy looks at Harriet; she shrugs. ‘Sure,' Peachy says. He and the cougar had been resting the trout the night before, so it's not like Peachy's upset they'll have company. He's tired and figures he can use a few hours on the pins with nothing to do but tie on flies and shoot the breeze.”

Sam used a forefinger to dig into the cowlick of chest hair sprouting from the neck of his T-shirt. “Anyway . . .” He let the word hang while he pulled off the shirt. He peered down at a dime-sized circle of blood over his sternum. “I got a fuckin' tick,” he said. “Where did you come from, darling?” He pinched off the pendulous bug, bloated with blood, and flicked it away. He dug into the bite. He peered at his chest skeptically. “I look like a gorilla mainlining Rogaine. No wonder Darcy left me.”

“Darcy left you because you're married to this boat all day and you're in the bar all night.”

Sam grunted. “God love her,” he said, dismissing the subject.

“So anyway, they're on the river and this guy starts yanking lips. Peachy says it's a miracle because he's a rug beater, slapping the water on his backcasts, throwing wind knots in his leader, he can't get a free drift to save his soul. But you guide, you know it can happen. Guy can't find his dick with both hands catches all the trout in the river. Like a gift from God or something. And the cougar's getting her rod bent, too, it's just one of those days. Then they pull over for lunch and all of a sudden the dude's got his head in his hands, crying. And this is when it gets interesting, because when Peachy asks what's the matter, the guy says he thought he'd be dead now. He says he'd
planned
on being dead. We're talking really distraught, so Peachy fetches the medicine kit from the skiff, mixes the guy a dirty martini, olives and all. Mixes one for the cougar. Mixes himself one. Peachy being Peachy, next thing you know they're passing a joint. The cougar gets in on the act; she puts her arms around the guy and pulls his head down onto her Marilyn Monroes, does everything but offer him a nipple. Turns out she's a school counselor with a master's in psych, she knows the buttons to push and they're sitting there on the bank and the guy comes out with the story. Weird-looking dude, Peachy says he looks like he belongs in a tree, got a face like a chimp . . . Yeah, I know, I digress.

“So the deal was, this guy took a fuckin' train all the way from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was a professor at the U there, cultural anthropology, which is sort of apropos considering the mug. Spent a lot of time in Guatemala, some other places they speak español. Surfer dude, go figure. The waves are coming in, the world's a good place to live. Then one day he's with the girlfriend and can't get it up with a cantilever crane. There's Viagra so it isn't the end of the world, but other symptoms start popping up: chills, fevers, fuckin' delirium, man. Turns out he contracted some rare kind of brain malaria during a sabbatical year when he was surfing off the coast of Panama. He'd been taking malaria pills for years, but the side effects were so bad sometimes he'd stop for a while. Guy gets worse, guy gets a little better, guy gets a lot worse, guy gets only a little better. Doctor's pumping him full of antibiotics, but anybody can see where the arrow's pointing. This kind of malaria, there's no silver bullet. Skeeter drills that proboscis into you, you got a couple years losing your mind and wishin' you were dead, then the wish comes true. Shit, man, I need a smoke.”

Stranahan's mind raced while Sam fished in a compartment under his rowing seat for cigarettes. This was Gutierrez's story with the names changed. Two strong men who'd seen a lot of life, deciding to check out on their own terms. Only the state and the symptoms were different.

Sam waded back to the log, a handrolled fag with a dogleg bobbing in the corner of his mouth. He flicked the head of a wooden match on his thumbnail and Stranahan could smell sulfur. Sam exhaled a lungful of smoke.

“I know, I'm killing myself. But I'm down to smoking only on fishing days.” He thought about it. “'Course I fish every day.”

“Finish your story,” Stranahan said.

“I told you this would give your pecker a jolt. Shit, this is just the
beginning
of the story. So this guy, he's been in psychotherapy half his life, the kind of guy wakes up after a bad dream and figures he better see his shrink and find out what it was about. Okay, a little more understandable considering the circumstances. His shrink advises him to go to a retreat upstate, the U's biological station at a place called Burt Lake. This is just a couple months ago, before the summer session students show up—”

Stranahan interrupted. “How do you know all this?”

“I'm getting to it. So he goes to the retreat, it's a bunch of people like himself who are looking at the void and rehearsing for good Saint Peter, and he meets this guy, a fellow patient. Guess where he's from.”

“Montana?”

“Bingo.”

“What's his name?”

“Wade.”

“That's all?”

“They just go by first names. So the two of them, they take a rowboat out onto the lake to drown some worms, but considering the lateness of the hour, so to speak, they're not too interested in fishing. They start talking and find they're on the same page. They got no intention of dying in diapers with a tube up the John Henry and half a dozen brain cells between them. Wade, the Montanan, tells him about this short story he read as a kid, something about a count who hunts down these guys stranded on an island . . .”

“‘The Most Dangerous Game,'” Stranahan said. His skin crawled. The sun had angled under the willows that shaded the bank and he felt a drop of sweat track down his spine.

“That's it,” Sam said. “How the hell?”

“I have to call the sheriff,” Stranahan said.

“Good luck getting reception. When we get back to Ennis—”

“No, I mean now.”

“Keep your hay in the barn. She already knows. Peachy was going to call her after he talked to me. Shit, it was me who told him to. I tried calling you first, but when you didn't pick up . . . Are you going to let me finish or not? Yeah? Okay? Listen to Sam. So this guy tells him this story which you seem to already know about, and asks him if he'd like to play it with him, only with the sides being equally armed. Says, ‘Let's go out like fucking men with rifles in our hands.' Calls it ‘Death with Honor.' Anyway, Peachy wasn't real clear on the details, but the upshot, and I'm cutting the conversation short, is that the two of 'em plan to duel it out up in the mountains.” Sam cocked his finger and pointed east and north across the river, where the striated peak of the Sphinx brooded under scuff marks made by a shoal of cirrus clouds.

“So comes the big day, Sunday being the Lord's day, or maybe it's Monday, and now I'm jumping way the fuck ahead 'cause there's the train ride to work out and this secret correspondence and a bunch of other crap so no one's to know, and the guy drives to the trailhead and punches in the GPS coordinates where they're supposed to go High Noon on each other. He starts hiking in, and about halfway up the mountain he's in a cold sweat with his heart jumping out of his chest and the chimp chickens out. Just fucking turns a puke shade of yellow. He books a room at the dude ranch and holes up in the cabin with his tail between his legs, trying to get straight with the Almighty who up to this time hasn't been such a big fuckin' part of his life, but I suppose a death sentence gives you religion. At dawn he still hasn't slept and then here comes Peachy towing his blue driftboat and he takes it as a sign, Jesus being a fisherman and all . . .”

“Sam, are you bullshitting me? Jesus. Really?”

Sam looked abashed. His chest heaved and he took the cigarette from his mouth and dipped the ash in the river. He slipped the butt under a curl of hair over his right ear and shook his head.

“I don't know what the fuck gets into me. I start telling it like it is and then all of a sudden I'm making shit up. I been doing it all my life and I'm not even aware of it half the time. I don't know, man. I just don't know. I was telling you the truth right up to the Jesus part, I swear. Well, maybe the halfway up the trail part. I really don't know how far he got or even if he left the fuckin' car before turning tail.”

“Okay, Sam.”

“Well, for
some
reason he decides to go fishing, and I've already told you he spills the beans to Peachy and the cougar. Well, the thing is the whole time they're on the water the guy's super emotional and the cougar, being a counselor and all, tells Peachy that he's at really high risk for committing suicide and she doesn't think they can just leave him off at the cabin. She says she thinks she should stay with him, eat dinner with him, and keep him talking. And on account of Peachy knowing the cougar like he does, he can take the hint, he figures it's only a matter of time before the old guy's plowing that good German earth. So he says good night and the next thing you know it's two in the morning and the phone in his cabin rings and it's the cougar, asking him if he's got any Viagra. Sure enough, she took the old guy to bed and he can't get it up. He hasn't flipped that switch for two years and the end's in sight whether he snaps a cap or lets God pull the plug, and now he's naked in her arms crying like a baby. Peachy says you know I don't need no Viagra. And she says I don't know who else to call, so Peachy hangs up and calls me.”

“So did you have any Viagra, Sam?”

“Moi? I need Viagra like a carp needs collagen. Well, if you're talking technically true there was this night I got sort of down in the dumps over the sorry state of my affairs, looking at myself in the mirror and seeing a guy with grooves in his teeth who lives in a fuckin' tin can, and I'd picked up this swamp angel at the Cottonwood and something didn't unfold the way it should have, if you savvy, but she had these dreads that looked like a nest of rattlesnakes and anyway it was just the once. Even if I did have some pecker pills, I was an hour's drive away. So Peachy calls her back and she tells him to start knocking on the doors of the guest cabins to see if he can rustle some up. Peachy draws the line right there, he's got his reputation to uphold, so the cougar says then you come over to the cabin and babysit while I go looking. So, all right, Peachy goes over and by this time the gentleman has his pants on and he's sipping a cup of tea with his pinkie out, like he's at fucking Ascot. The cougar leaves and the guy says would you like some tea. Okay, so they drink their tea and Peachy's thinking sometimes a day doesn't end the way you think it will, three in the goddamned morning, and the guy, he's talking about surfing, no bullshit, like how he'd like to hang on until he can hang ten just one more time. Then the guy gets real serious, tells Peachy that Harriet saved his life and he'll never forget it, and he'll never forget Peachy either, it's restored his faith in humanity, and he wants to hug it out and by this time Harriet's back so it's a group hug, the three of them. Turns out about the second door she knocked on this middle-aged guy peeks out. She says, ‘Sir, you wouldn't happen to have any Viagra, would you? It's for a good cause.' The guy says no and he's shutting the door when there's this woman's voice in the background—‘Have a heart, John, give her one of your blue magics. How hard would
you
be without them?' So they got the Viagra and Harriet gives Peachy a kiss and whispers in his ear, ‘Don't you dare go anywhere but your cabin,' and a couple hours go by and Harriet knocks on his door to tell him pop went the weasel and the dude's asleep like for the first time in three days.