Specimen Song (25 page)
Authors: Peter Bowen
But he could do that on a long hook, sliding around Du Pré.
Du Pré moved forward, spreading the undergrowth with his foot before putting it down.
He waited. Lucky was moving slowly, too.
An owl hooted softly.
Du Pré wondered what the hell Benetsee had meant by remembering his fathers.
Catfoot, of course. When Catfoot walked, he barely ruffled the dust.
Du Pré listened as hard as he could. He thought of Lucky’s sounds as music, tried to think where they would go next.
The gunfire died away and all was silent back behind Du Pré.
She’s reloading, thought Du Pré. I love that kid. We can visit each other in jail.
He heard the Rover drive off, then stop.
He heard Maria ululating, the blood warble of Indian women, to send their love to their men in battle.
Du Pré felt the earth beneath the soft soles of the moccasins, flexed his toes, and gripped. He breathed deeply. The light was rising; the dew glittered. He felt spider-webs across his face as he moved, sling loaded and in hand.
I’d rather have a sawed-off shotgun, thought Du Pré. But it would not fit in this song, I think.
The Rover drove back the other way, a door opened, the guns went again, and then the Rover drove away fast.
Du Pré heard sirens faint and far off.
The light rose, flooding. Du Pré smelled ferns and duff and the sour standing water. Pine. A bitter whiff of tobacco, sour, old, sunk in cloth and skin. He heard a rhythm soft and intrusive, like dry, callused palms rubbed lightly over one another, skin rasping on skin, and then what he thought might be a drum.
Benetsee.
Du Pré looked ahead and saw an eye behind leaves spangled with drops of iridescence.
Lucky fired as Du Pré dropped, and the slug went past just over him. Du Pré rolled behind a rotten log, wriggled over to a small gully, went on elbows like a salamander rising in the sun like fire. A snake lifted up its head and then sinuously disappeared into a hole by a tree root.
I want him before them fucking cops get here and grab him, only to let him walk, Du Pré thought. My fathers, do me honor, guide me now, make my hand strong and my eye keen, and let me use this sling rooted in the earth. I want his blood.
Du Pré stood up quickly, saw the path Lucky had taken, the leaves unwinking with the dew he’d shaken off in passage. Toward a clearing up ahead.
I got to fight him in the open, then I do that.
Du Pré heard Benetsee’s bullroarer in his left ear, coming from the west.
Du Pré ran forward, bobbing, crouching, shifting.
He paused and put two of the stones in his mouth.
He raised his head above the clustered prickly ash and saw a junkyard, old cars piled high, several draglines rusting, booms lowered to the earth, blackberry bushes thick over forgotten shells of metal.
Du Pré stood up. He looked toward the rising sun on his right. He glanced to his left.
Bears and bobcats, old dances, warriors slithering in the night to steal horses flashed through his mind.
Du Pré dove hard for the hump of a crumpled car just ahead of him.
He heard the shot and the slug hit the rusty metal and punched a hole on through. Du Pré shoved himself through the blackberry vines; the spines clawed at his hands and face.
Du Pré stood up quickly, staring hard at where the slugs had come from. Lucky was thirty feet up in an oak, straddling a branch and aiming. Du Pré dropped again.
“You are cooked,” Du Pré shouted.
The sirens were winding down.
Y
OU DON’T HAVE A GUN,
” said Lucky. He tossed his off into a mess of blackberries.
Du Pré saw the driving gloves on Lucky’s hands. Lucky balled them up and tossed them after the gun. Can’t get prints off rough leather so good.
Lucky shifted so he sat legs on one side of the big branch.
“You kill a bunch of people,” said Du Pré. “Now why you do that?”
“I like it,” said Lucky. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Fucking right I don’t understand, Du Pré thought. He listened for the sound of people coming through the woods, but there was nothing. A car horn blared. Too far to hear people shouting, probably.
“There’s nothing you can do, Du Pré,” said Lucky. “You could dig the gun out of the bushes, maybe catch me before I got to the road. Shoot me. Maybe, but I don’t think so. They got you clear for murder then, Du Pré.”
Du Pré heard the hand drum, wings, smelled cedar, blood, earth.
Lucky sat easy on the branch. He took out a cigarette and lit it, drew the smoke into his lungs.
“Fuck you, Du Pré,” said Lucky. “Pretty smart of you, figure it out, some folks would say. But you aren’t smart enough to beat me. You figure it out, you still got nothing. They can arrest me. They got not one damn thing, Du Pré. I say, no, I did not, they let me go. Can’t do anything at all Du Pré. Great country we live in, don’t you think?”
Du Pré moved round to a clear place. He let the thongs of the slingshot drop slowly.
He prayed. Lucky turned his head; a branch snapped some ways off. Someone was coming.
Du Pré whirled the shot, crouched, rose up, let the thong go. The stone flashed straight and caught Lucky in the temple as he turned his head. His arms jerked up, he quivered, fell over backward, thumped into the damp earth, crushing the underbrush.
Du Pré made his way over to him. His neck was broken, his head bent over too far on his shoulder.
Du Pré looked at the little trickle of blood at the corner of Lucky’s mouth. The stone ball lay on the ground, in the center of a maple’s leaf, crimson on its etched blackness. Du Pré picked it up, looked at it, put it in his mouth.
“Taste your blood, Lucky,” said Du Pré. “I hate you for what you did, you bastard. I hate you for what you did to them and now for what you’ve done to me.”
People were coming. Du Pré didn’t care to talk to them. He moved back into the forest, rubbed mud on his face, hid in bushes, watched them pass, starting every time they made a noise themselves. He waited till they found Lucky and began to shout and then calm down and talk into their radios.
Du Pré moved through the forest to the highway, looked, crossed it, took his careful time making his way back to the inn. It was late afternoon. The Rover was parked away from the door; the Washington, D.C., plates were back on it. Du Pré let himself into his room.
“Over now, huh, Papa?” said Maria. She was lying on the bed, reading a book.
Du Pré nodded.
“You hear me do the ululation?”
“Yes,” said Du Pré. “Where you learn to do that?”
“You don’t learn to do that, Papa,” said Maria. “It is in the blood, you know. It just came to me.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré. “Now you tell your papa where you get all them damn guns you shoot off.”
“Evidence room at the sheriffs back home,” said Maria. “Don’t worry, I erased all the records. They were part of a dope bust four years ago, pretty well forgotten. Took them out of the computer, the files.”
Maria had done some work for the Sheriff’s Department for credit in high school. She’d done some work on the Sheriff’s Department, too.
What do I got to say? Du Pré thought. I kill that sack of puke and don’t give a shit for the opinions of no one at all in the matter.
“Where them guns now?” said Du Pré suddenly.
“I wipe them off, put them under the seats of that car Lucky and the others drive up in,” said Maria sweetly. “You don’t think I am a thorough girl, Papa?”
“Shit,” said Du Pré.
“Them moccasin do you good there?” said Maria.
Du Pré nodded. “Bunch of things do me good.” He told her what had happened.
“I heard Benetsee,” said Maria, “heard him here while I wait for you. He told me my warrior be back soon, then he say my papa come a little after. You know you walking different from how you do at home, wearing the boots?”
Du Pré looked down at his filthy clothes, the moccasins all smeared and spattered. He felt tired.
“You maybe wash my clothes while I rest?” said Du Pré.
‘Sure,” said Maria. “We need to stay another night, anyway, not run off, attract attention. I like this being a crook, you know.”
“It is not that,” said Du Pré.
“I know,” said Maria. “Some crazy country, huh? Too many people in it. Some guy like Lucky, he kills for the fun of it. I wonder how many like him there are.”
“Michelle Leuci says about two hundred any given time. Very hard to catch, you know. Most crooks are dumb, but they are not.”
Du Pré found some whiskey after Maria had left with his soiled clothes. Wash out the last of it.
If I hadn’t killed him, then I would have had to keep on all I could, Du Pré drought, very hard to find the right moment.
The telephone rang. Du Pré nodded and picked it up.
“What the fuck have you been up to?” snarled Detective Michelle Leuci.
“Just woke up,” said Du Pré.
Michelle was silent for a moment.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Okay,” said Du Pré. “Who is dead?”
“Lucky,” said Michelle. “But you wouldn’t know anything at all about that, I am sure.”
“Well, I can’t say that I am sorry,” said Du Pré. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, other than he was DOA,” said Michelle. “Maybe the coroner will find something, the ME.”
“How is Bart?” said Du Pré.
“Thanks for changing the subject,” said Michelle, “since I know what happened enough to know I never will know what happened. So I guess it is fine, I hope, I hope. He’s kinda chewed up and feeling ill-used.”
“Oh?” said Du Pré.
“Yeah. I couldn’t stop you so I dumped all over him. He said you were his best friend and he knew you very well and that if anything bad happened, he would pay for a fine defense for you. He also said that Lucky was dead meat. Did you know you scare Bart?”
“Why should I scare Bart?” said Du Pré.
“Yes,” said Detective Michelle Leuci.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1995 by Peter Bowen
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-4675-7
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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