Soil (9 page)

13

Jay waited until she was out of earshot and then drew trembling aim on the dog as he dragged the tarp by his teeth around the yard in proud loops. The dog had almost blown his cover. Having him here was a needless risk and complication. He could just run him out into the pasture and shoot and burn him. Would he be able to look his son in the eye and tell that lie? There were many ways, after all, for a country dog to meet an untimely end.

Jay lowered the pistol, released the hammer, and tucked it down the back of his shorts. He loved his son too much to shoot this dog, even if he'd become a man who would contemplate murder for nothing less than irrational fear.

He whistled and Chipper came taunting ten feet away. Jay poised and clucked his tongue, drawing the dog a few feet closer, and then he threw himself on the tarp and ripped it from the pup's mouth. He snatched the dog by the leg and Chipper yipped and tried to pull free, but Jay had him. He was still small enough to cradle like a baby. The pup surrendered, tucking his ears back, smacking his wide mouth, a confused look of love or terror in his black eyes. “Why does that boy love you so?” Jay asked Chipper, who answered with a tentative wag of his tail.

He put the dog in the mudroom with bowls of water and kibble and came outside, where he sat in a lawn chair and closed his eyes and listened to the dog yelp. It wasn't Chipper that troubled him, though he created a distraction and new potential for mistakes. After all, there was a smoldering pit over the hill waiting to earn him a life sentence.

Seeing her again had shaken him awake from this ridiculous dream he'd
been living. Their paths had diverged, and he couldn't even recall where or why. He'd wanted to tell her everything and might have spilled his guts except he couldn't risk losing her again.

He wondered, had she fixed up her hair in those wild curls just for him, or was there someone else now? The whole time she was standing there—hiding behind sunglasses and a forced scowl, her sharp nose and those randy disapproving lips—he'd wanted to throw his arms around her, almost in anger, an impassioned anger. He imagined she would smell different, like a musty rental, or perhaps a new perfume. He wanted to sniff out her true scent, buried deep in that styled hair and soft neck. She seemed fleshier to him, like town living had filled her out. He imagined the unfamiliar doughiness of her arms, the press of strange fabric. The blue pilot light flaring inside them both, reigniting with a whoosh. Prickly legs from a two-day stubble. Inhaling without permission her bare pooch, dusted with fragrance, like warm bread to a starving man. It was a simple peace, this image of a last-ditch carnal frolic across the hood of a dusty Maxima, but could everything have really been saved in just that instant, slipping back into their old impassioned ways?

Blood rushed from his head to his lap and he stood up dizzy and shook off this fantasy. Her visit had also confirmed his fear that anyone could drive up out of the blue and catch him in the act. There wasn't a moment to waste. He had to strike the campsite, get rid of the drum and keg. There was so much left to burn—the tarp, the half-baked bones and sacks of soiled clothing, both his and the corpse's. The boat tied to the willow tree, the missing hand. All the tools and machinery, which he'd have to either clean or destroy. The shards of bone in the bucket and in the tarp, waiting to be broken, just sitting under the carport where any joe looking to borrow putty could find them.

He stomped over the hill and into the pasture and back down to the scorched, foggy hollow with his neck hairs on end, as if he'd encroached on the scene of some ritualistic killing. He gathered up the scattered leg quarters that the dog had pulled from the ashes. Maybe Chipper wouldn't mind refining these cold organs if he was so hungry. Jay held his breath as he poured the chum into a bucket. Some of it splattered on the ground. He'd have to
come back with a shovel and collect this ground. There was plenty to get. The whole site was a crime scene.

He lugged the bucket over the hill and down to the house. Under the carport he pulled a pie tin out from beneath a pot of mint leaves and poured up a dish and then released Chipper from the mudroom. The dog ran around, sniffed the pan, and then lay down at the far end of the carport, panting, tipping his brow up now and again. “Must be nice to be so full of chow, you little satisfied bastard,” said Jay, dumping the gruel back into the bucket.

The hunger was on him again. He opened the door to the exterior utility room and checked the deep freezer for leftover game. He'd rigged this freezer up to a solar power grid on the roof that generated just enough wattage to keep his supply of venison and fish and vegetables frozen. But the freezer's motor had been dying for a week or more, rattling like a golf ball in a tin cup, and now he heard nothing. He raised the lid and peered inside. The frost barnacles were shrinking like the polar ice caps. A memory of deer steaks drew a squall deep in his empty belly. It would have been nice to grill up those few last fish, but they were all caught from the spontaneous pond, and the thought of eating them now pained him more than his own hunger. He opened a freezer bag and pulled one out, still frozen. Judging by the little fish-lip divots on his dead man, schools of these river fish had feasted on the corpse. He shivered at the thought of how many he'd eaten fresh. And what about the bridge fishers who'd camped out on the margin of his field and cast their lines into his pond and stolen his fish? How many of them had eaten scraps of the dead man? An entire cast of county deadbeats were complicit in this man's disappearance, carrying the evidence in their cells.

He found an ice chest and pitched in every bag of fish from the freezer. He placed the bucket of stew inside and closed the lid and retraced his steps from late yesterday afternoon until Sandy's arrival, performing a cursory sweep of the property to find any evidence in need of elimination.

He fetched a shovel and bucket and scooped out the dirt floor at the back of the shed where the body had sat for an entire day, and then he went out and dug the pasture ground where he'd trampled and dripped and spilled.
He filled buckets of dirt and even the hot coals and ash from the fire. The gut buckets, the tools, anything in need of scrubbing. He had to get it all to the river for washing and disposal.

Jay pushed the four-wheeler from the shed to the driveway, up close to the Bronco. Now that he had a little cash, he could afford to share the last of the fuel. With a hatchet, he lopped a length of garden hose right off the dry spigot and began siphoning gas from the truck to the four-wheeler. He dipped the hose into the ATV tank and let it drain for a minute, tried to crank it with no luck, then fiddled a bit with the choke, gave it some more juice, cranked it finally, and let it rumble. He loaded the cooler and several buckets onto the rear rack, fastened them with the bungee cords, then climbed astride and set off for the river with Chipper in pursuit.

Jay traveled a series of paths through the woods and came to a spot along the river with a shallow bank that would be easy to maneuver. He switched off the ATV and stared at the water. It ran high and fast and full of debris, not only tree limbs and logs but buckets, tires, paint cans, plastic soda bottles, a half-inflated pool raft. He saw a tube fluorescent lightbulb slide by, miraculously intact. How much had been swept away by the retreating flood and how much had been simply tossed in by the criminally stupid and lazy?

Aggravated by the state of the land, he climbed off the cycle and began to unstrap the buckets and cooler. He hissed at Chipper, who was tromping through a mudhole. The current would whisk him away if he ventured too far. Jay gathered the buckets and was preparing to dump them at the water's edge when he heard a scuffle in the leaves behind him. He found Chipper tangled up with another dog, a larger, savage-looking animal. If not for the collar, he would have assumed it was feral.

Jay looked around for an owner. He called out. Maybe someone was nearby relieving himself or slow to catch up. He strained to hear a response from someone in the brush. There was only the frantic flow of the river and birds chirping in the forest. Maybe the dog had wandered away from a neighbor's, or someone had dropped it off on one of the country roads, too old to care for anymore. He called out again.

Surely the dog belonged to someone. It stared at him with wild suspicion but also the look of an expectant pet. It was hungry. Jay waited an anxious moment and then fetched the gut bucket and pie plate and poured a dish for the strange dog. It showed no restraint, going straight for the gruel.

Jay knelt down in the leaves and watched the animal gobble up the cold mush. It reminded him of Daisy Duke, his childhood dog. A German shepherd with big gnawed ears, a silly old sad-looking mutt. Daisy Duke had come home from the woods one day stinking of skunk spray, her leg injured with teeth and claw marks. The wound never healed, and the dog got sicker and sicker, couldn't keep food down. Her uncomfortable eyes went rheumy and possessed, and her behavior turned strange and volatile. Jay's dad told him it was rabies and that the dog wouldn't live long. He took Daisy Duke out for a long walk one day and came back alone.

Chipper became interested in the stew and stuck his snout in to inspect. The strange dog snarled and bared its fangs, running Chipper back to cower and pout. Something about the dog's aggressive satisfaction with the meal, the exaggerated lip licking and grunting and burping, disgusted Jay. The rotten teeth, the patchy mottled fur, the one red weepy eye swollen shut. He poured the dog a second plate, which it devoured and then came sniffing around again, even licking the rim of the bucket. The organs were gone.

Would the dog follow them home now, expecting a warm place to sleep and dinner too? Or would it wander home and raise the suspicion of its owner when it sprayed heinous diarrhea all over the patio or the living room rug? The dog licked its chops and belched. Jay wondered if DNA could be extracted after running through a dog's digestive system.

He reached out to pet the dog's head and let it sniff him. He rubbed it under the muzzle and felt the jaw tighten. Maybe the dog was still hungry and had developed a new taste for man, he considered. If the dog became aggressive, he wouldn't have the strength to fight it off.

Jay pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it thick around the dog's crown and reached back to his waistband. The balled-up shirt muffled the pop of the .38. It was like someone else had done it.

He watched the animal collapse and shiver in its last spasms. Blood chugged from the wound and into the leaves like spilled milk. Chipper sniffed and whimpered with confusion. Jay booted his pup back and grabbed the dead animal by all four paws, twirled, and tossed it into the river.

He stood at the water's edge and watched the animal sink below the water. He thought,
This is how it soon will be
.

After society's collapse, men will be forced to do things that their civilized minds would never have imagined. Decency and decorum, the lives of others—all will be expendable in light of your own survival and that of your family.

PART

II

The woodsman, whose name was Leavenger, wrenched his ankle climbing out of the river. Streaked head to toe with mud, he left his pants and hat on the bank and limped through the woods with only his shirt and pool cue. Dusk beat him to the pasture where he'd parked his camouflage truck. He was hobbling around and punching the panic button on his key set, unable to locate the vehicle in the high grass. Then he stepped in a divot and finished off the ankle. Writhing on the ground, with no one at home to worry over his whereabouts and his only love, Virginia, now sunk at the bottom of the river, Leavenger regretted that he'd left his gun behind or else he might have ended it all right there in the weeds. But then he heard the far-off truck horn and slithered like a beast out of Eden toward the blinking headlights. He groped his way into the passenger seat, situated himself atop the inflatable donut, and drove out cross-legged, half-drunk and heartbroken, to the emergency room in Madrid.

At the hospital they wrapped his ankle and assigned him a pair of crutches. The doctor assured him it was just a sprain but might take longer than normal to heal due to his wilted legs and reprehensible diet of drive-thru fare and cigarettes and cheap canned beer. They gave him a sedative and a bed for the night, and after they discharged him the next morning, he stopped to have a smoke with some of the other patients milling around the concrete patio by the front entrance.

As such conversation is struck up outside a hospital, he began relating
the details of his injury. The other patients, in their threadbare robes and grimy tracksuits, sporting week-old beards and terminal bed-head, pulled close and listened to Leavenger's exaggerated account, first of the ruptured steam pipe at the oil mill and later the mysterious man and the killing of his dog, and, strangest of all, the release of frozen fish back into the river. It was a fine story, refreshingly different from the litany of complaints against doctors and nurses and insurance providers. While many ignored him, some pumped him for more details and offered their condolences for the dog at least. The consensus suggested that he find that SOB and make him pay. The more often Leavenger told his story, the more outraged and persecuted he felt.

And so, over the next several days, he made the hospital courtyard a regular stop on his route through town and country. It was a good place to gossip and rant, and he came to know some of the same tired sufferers who dragged themselves out to get a breath of fresh air or to smoke or make a phone call or to smuggle in decent food from delivery cars.

On the first day of October, Leavenger made one such customary visit to the hospital courtyard. He took a seat on the stone bench and waited to bend someone's ear. A pruned woman in a flimsy nightgown, scooting around with a wheeled IV and a bored nurse in tow, was too concentrated on walking to speak to him, and he became annoyed by a young black man who strutted up and down the courtyard, gesticulating and speaking loudly, presumably into the hands-free phone wedged in his ear. Leavenger moved over to a familiar gray fellow in a wheelchair, Emphysema Ollie, who bummed a cigarette and complained about the oxygen tank strapped behind his chair. His insurance had lapsed after he was laid off at the pallet factory. He'd been in ROTC in high school ages ago and hoped he could pick up some latent benefits.

Leavenger snorted. “I hope you don't expect the government to pay for it, cause they aint.” He leaned in, conspiratorially, and stated loud enough, “You're the wrong color. Now if you were black, I bet they'd just write it off. That's how they do, you know.”

“Hold up, hold up,” the young black man said. He leaned over to Leavenger. “Hey, you got something to say about something?”

“Hell no, I'm not talking to you!” Leavenger cried, indignant. “Don't you see me talking to this man here?”

“Naw, man, just some old white dude talking shit about some shit. It aint nothing.” The young man walked away, back into his own chatter.

“Shit
I'm
talking?” Leavenger cried. He leaned in to Ollie. “Hell, I don't even know what language he's speaking.”

The young man kept cutting his eyes over to Leavenger, which made him nervous, so he pulled himself up and lunged away on his sticks. He'd gotten as far as the hospital entrance when he crossed paths with Shoals, the deputy sheriff, carrying a big bouquet of flowers and a balloon.

“What's happened to you now?” the deputy asked with a grin, as if the woodsman's misfortune were a frequent and hilarious occurrence.

Leavenger was not amused. He motioned down to his bandaged leg. “Broke my goddamn ankle.”

“Were you drinking?”

“No,” Leavenger lied. “I fell trying to climb out of the river down in Tockawah Bottom.”

The deputy became interested. “What were you doing down there?”

“I'll tell ya,” Leavenger said. He shuffled away from the automatic doors, which opened and closed like a defensive bird flapping its wings. He leaned against a garbage can and pulled a cigarette, lit it and puffed, catching his breath.

“I was down there walking my dog, checking things out. You know it flooded that whole bottom.”

“I'm aware,” the deputy replied.

“Okay, I was tramping around down there, scoping it out before bird season starts up, and I got overheated. So I walked down into the river to cool off when this fella comes riding up on a four-wheeler. Crazy damn look in his eyes. He's got his rack loaded up with all kinda stuff, he's shuffling around
at the river's edge all wild and suspicious. Then outta nowhere, the son of a bitch up and shoots my dog.”

“Shoots your dog?” the deputy asked, more in disbelief than dumbfoundment.

“Shoots her a few times and kicks and spits on her, then pitches her off into the river like a sack of trash.”

“What'd you do?”

“Nothing, hell, I was hiding in the water under some limbs. I thought he might shoot me next.”

“What'd he look like?”

Leavenger shrugged and winced, trying to climb out of his own embellishment to recall the man's features. “I didn't see him all that clear, but I know he had a big hat. A thin rascal. I probably could've taken him if I'd had pants on.”

The deputy raised an eyebrow. “Whereabouts was this exactly?”

Leavenger's eyes got wide and stymied. “I don't know exactly. Off behind Mel Fellows's place. Way off prob'ly. Just down on the river there back of his.”

“Mel aint nowhere near the river.”

“Shit, I don't have the goddamn GPS code,” Leavenger replied, frustrated. “It was off on the river, somewhere between Kitter Road and Tockawah.”

“Hmm,” the deputy replied. He turned to study a young lovely prancing by in pink scrubs.

“I'm just pissed the asshole shot my dog,” Leavenger said. “For no reason at all. Just to kill something, I suppose.”

“He didn't see you?”

“Nope. He dumped some junk in the river and rode off. Had a dog with him.”

“His dog?”

“Hell, I reckon. He didn't shoot it, so it must've been his.”

“What kind of junk was it?”

“Fish.”

“Fish?”

“Yeah. Looked like it was some frozen fish. Whole fish, head and all.”

The deputy shook his head for a while, either thinking or daydreaming. “Well, man, I'm sorry to hear about your dog,” Shoals replied finally. “And your ankle. You might file a report with the sheriff. We could look into it.”

“I just did file my report . . . with you,” Leavenger said. “So you ought to look into it. There's something not right about that dude.”

“Sounds like he's got an issue with trespassers.”

“Good thing he didn't see me down in that water.”

“A good thing indeed,” said the deputy. “All right, I better get moving.”

“You got somebody sick?” asked Leavenger, nodding to the deputy's bouquet.

“Not really. Kinda.”

“Hope you aint paying for it.”

Shoals smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and hurried away. Leavenger pegged off toward his truck. He doubted the deputy would give his predicament another thought. Justice, he knew, if sought in a mild instance such as this, would have to be got by the victim all on his own.