I couldn’t complain. I was alive, miraculously alive. And with this somewhat comforting realization I curled up next to a cypress stump and faded off into another abandon of death-like sleep.
***
Morning, a thin stream of light. When I finally managed to pry my left eye open I found it was not the sun which had awakened me. The humidity had. A thick blanket of mist drifted in among the creek bed and bordering grasses, like a gossamer cloud drifting just above the ground. I was as stiff as a leather strap left out in the sun, and when I moved my joints popped loudly. I felt the knot that made up the tissue around my right eye and hoped I wasn’t imagining that the swelling had receded a little over night. There was a prehistoric taste in my mouth that denied explanation. I stretched against the pain until I was finally able to stand up. Then I looked around through the slit of my left eye.
What was the old castaway saying: Water, water everywhere? Yeah, only the color of this sea was different: grass green to straw brown. My stomach screamed for food, howled long and loud for it; the last thing I’d eaten was that Snickers bar at the Greyhound station. I had no idea what had happened to the Milky Way I’d bought before getting kidnapped. But first things first.
It was time to move. Okay, where? No idea, but to remain would be no better than taking a bullet from Dingo. I could shudderingly picture that demon methodically picking through the foliage and undergrowth, those eyes as wide and round as dinner plates as he sniffed me out. And sore or not, that was finally what got me going.
Rather than attempt another foray into the razor grass I decided to follow the creek. It had to go somewhere, everything did, and if I happened upon Dingo in the process…well, thems the breaks. I needed a road, anything mildly suggesting civilization. I had no idea what a random motorist would make of me, but I didn’t care. I would die of exposure and starvation if I didn’t do something quick.
And as far as I could tell there was only one thing left to do.
I kicked a trench in the soft mud which clung to the side of the creek. Then I fished out the twenty-three dollars I’d filched from the dead woman’s wallet, rolled it into a slim tube, and placed it gingerly, respectfully, into the hole. I closed my eyes, waited for what I thought a sufficiently solemn moment to pass, and raked the dirt over the bills.
Then I turned to follow wherever the creek led.
***
No more than a half-hour later I paused, cocked my head in the general direction to be sure, my heart pounding in my chest. But yes, it was unmistakable! The sound of cars flying by on asphalt somewhere ahead.
By now the creek had receded into a deepening cleft in the soft, spongy ground, and it took concentrated effort to stay out of the water because the mud which lined the bank had an irresistible pull, and thick clusters of tall grass grew right up to its edge. The creek had grown from a trickle to a flowing turgidity, and just staying out of the gumbo-mud on the periphery was hard enough.
I’d finally managed to coax my right eye open (if even through a thinner slit than the left), and when I saw the culvert all my lingering aches and pains pulled back. I ducked underneath an overhanging, lichen-encrusted limb from a leaning live oak and let out a yell of triumph when I saw the bridge stanchions no more than thirty feet farther along. Concrete stanchions, not wooden. So it wouldn’t be some lost farm road on the ass-end of nowhere. I wanted a state highway. An interstate if I was lucky. If I climbed the bank and found a whole contingent of State Troopers waiting patiently on the shoulder I would have considered the day a ringer. Just as long as I didn’t see that bastard Dingo.
I started up the side, grabbing any stray root and embedded rock that looked capable of supporting my weight, and I must have looked like a dung beetle going up that embankment. But it was pretty quick going if you didn’t mind the mud and by that time I was past caring. When I pulled myself to street level I got the weirdest feeling I was looking past the edge of the world, at something I’d never been meant to see.I was panting, gasping with every move. Several cars passed as I crawled out of the undergrowth to the shoulder. Nobody saw me, or if they did they didn’t let on. The sun was, in contrast to the days before, choking hot which is not out of the ordinary in Louisiana at just about any time of the year, and things suddenly got real hazy. The next thing I remember was waking up face down, the back of my neck burning. I raised myself to one knee and looked right and left. Highway stretched away in a shimmer of pavement. I heard an engine approaching and held my thumb out, wavering like some drunk fresh off a bender.
It was a motorcycle, slowing as the rider saw me and moved over to the shoulder. I tottered over in the heat, putting down one arm, still keeping the other out, thumb up. The bike throttled down from several hundred yards away. It pulled over to the side of the road and idled. All I could make out was a burly form hunched above ape-hanger handlebars, the rider’s face lost amid a cloud of hair and helmet shoved down tightly on the crown of his head.
I could no longer stay upright and collapsed in the gravel by the shoulder. I heard one word before I lapsed into unconscious. “Goddamn,” the biker said as he pulled within feet of me. Then nothing.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. I was lost in a deep, dreamless world of nothing at all, quiet and still as death is imagined to be, but very gradually sound crept back into my brain. Crickets scratching away somewhere in the grass, a far lost drone of passing vehicles. When I opened my eyes I saw nothing, continuing the illusion of being lost in a void. But I could hear a voice.
“Easy, little buddy,” the voice said. I felt a warm, soothing hand pressed against my forehead and for a moment I thought it was my grandmother’s, come back from the grave to comfort me in whatever new hell I’d descended to. And that was actually what boosted me the rest of the way to consciousness. I remember wondering what right she had in a place like that, was actually on the verge of real anger as I came around, but when I opened my eyes it was not her face I saw.
The face was male, bearded and sun-burnt like some farmers I’d seen on a National Geographic special, bright questioning green eyes hidden behind what looked to be perpetually-squinted lids. Now I noticed the roughness of his hand and the curl of scar just to the right of his pug nose. His teeth were as thick as alligator claws. I coughed weakly and the hand swept across my mouth, wiping away whatever I’d choked up. Another rough, calloused hand cradled the back of my neck and before I could form a single thought I was fully upright. The bearded face before me again. And thankfully, instead of madness this time, I saw concern. The man’s lips moved but it took several moments more before I could understood anything, like his words were filtering down to me through a funnel stuffed with cotton. But before I could reply I gagged again and felt a gigantic tearing sensation in my chest, like muscle pulling away from bone. His hand clapped my back gently, holding the back of my neck for support as I gagged and threw up between my legs.
“Easy now, go easy,” I heard. I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. I tried to whisper thanks to this new savior but couldn’t find the power to do so. The face came into focus again; his eyes golden-green I now saw, like little pieces of amber reflecting in a vast field. “Don’t try an talk,” he added gruffly, once again reminding me of the care my grandmother had given until she was gone, though not in her tone. “Relax, everything’s gonna be all right.”
I almost laughed at that one until I lapsed into another uneasy passing.
***
It was better the second time around. My head didn’t pound as badly and the pain in my face and chest had lessened. And I noticed it was much cooler now. I raised my head and looked around. A campfire was burning close by and the crackling wood lent a certain comfort I hadn’t felt in months, since well before Grandma died. The biker was sitting next to it, holding a long stick over the flames with what looked like a rabbit stretched along its length. The smell reached my nostrils and my stomach immediately began to perform summersaults. I grunted
and rocked back, trying to hold it in place and with the movement he looked my way and smiled, went easily to his feet and walked over to me. He was tall, not a single ounce of fat it appeared, dressed in black head to toe, the shirt sleeveless of course though there were no tattoos which was a surprise. It was then I noticed I was covered in a blanket and it was full night. Always it seems, as if I was lost in some dark realm that refused to surrender itself to the light of day.
The biker squatted down. He held out the stick and the wafting smell of cooked rabbit brought on spasms of near hysteria. “Take it,” he said and handed me the stick. I grabbed the hot meat with my bare hands and began woofing it down like a starved dog. I remember hearing him laugh gently as I went berserk on that rabbit.
***
His name was John Brady, just like the guy who got the worst of it when Reagan was shot. Makes me wonder, you know, if maybe some names are just flat unlucky from the get-go. Said he was in the area for a Harley convention and that was understandable, his bike was a real beaut. Shovel-nose, chrome and leather. I half-expected to hear police sirens in the distance coming to nab his ass, but that goddamn rabbit was good! By the time I managed to mumble my thanks a pile of broken and gnawed bones lay at my feet. Just tearing through it like a dog on a T-bone. In retrospect, it was a good thing he cut the head off or I’d’ve eaten that too. And the whole time I went barbarian Brady sat quiet by the fire, looking over at me every once in a while and stirring the coals of the fire with the tip of his boot.
When I finished I gathered up the scattered fragments of skin and bone and walked over, dumped them on the fire. It was then he told me his name (no ominous portents since Reagan’s assassination attempt was only an unknown arc of potential in the future) and where he came from. Miami Beach, Florida, the Sunshine State, he added grinning so broadly the beard below his mouth bobbed around like a disembodied cloud. I thanked him again for the rabbit and he shook it off.
“What gorilla tangled w’chu?” he asked. Up close, his wrinkled, sunburned eyelids only added to his sinister persona, and I suddenly felt very wary again. This guy made Dingo look like a junior high kiss-ass.
“Some dudes snatched me off a bus in Bossier,” I told him, glancing off into the crackling night, fireside. “Broad daylight. Driver never even stopped to count passengers, I guess.”
“Near a Big R?”
I thought that had been the name of the place; I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I thought so.
He looked away, but continued talking. “Paper says police found a body right down the road from a Big R near Montgomery Exit Ramp. Near Bossier City. Hell of a thing, ain’t it? In a construction site dumpster, as a matter of fact…some old house being renovated, it said. Nobody seen nothing.” His information trailed away and I felt the skin around my mouth tighten.
He lit up and pulled long and hard on a cigarette that he flipped deftly from his T-shirt pocket before giving me the next little tidbit. “Papers also say the guy’d been picked up before for kidnappin’. Molestin’ kids an shit.” He stopped and picked a piece of tobacco from his tongue, examined it in the firelight, and tossed it away. “Odd bit, ain’t it?”
I rubbed a hand across my mouth, already aware of the trickle of ice-cold sweat skimming down my spine. I shrugged, hoping to buy time until I decided what options I had. Surely this guy wasn’t a cop, but what if he knew Dingo or Pete? And where the hell was I if I did make a break for it? He had a bike I could never hope to outdistance. Before I could go any further he continued.
“I been to jail once, kid. One summer got mixed up with some other stupid assholes and robbed a convenience store.” He shuck his head and grimaced into the campfire. “Fifty-four fuckin dollars we split three ways! Did nine months for that one an it was a hard lesson. But I learned a lot more in the joint, kid. One of the most important things was child molesters are scum, pure scum. They don’t usually last long in the joint either. So when I hear about things like that Big R, I don‘t waste time worryin about the guy in the dumpster. I’m just glad he ain’t ever gettin another chance to do what he done before.”
And when he looked back into my eyes his face held our mighty secret.
We rode together until he was killed less than two months later. It happened on a country road running through a cotton field in Alabama. Bad goddamn timing was all it really amounted to. And of all people an ex-sheriff, the sonofabitch who pulled the trigger.
This is why.
***
September 16, 1982, William Robertson got a visit from hell. He’d been a sheriff then; he would carry his badge another six months from that date as well, but it was effectively over when the clock struck twelve that night. September 16th was the day he stopped being a law enforcement officer, the day he stopped being anything at all. Not that he’d ever needed to be anything in the first place. His father, William “Big Bill” Robertson, had controlled a large slice of the economic lifeblood of the Alabama Gulf Coat in the late 40’s and 50’s. Tourism wasn’t the monster it is now, then, but it was nothing to sneeze at. He bought land cheap through connections he had in Memphis and Mobile, built motels and roadside restaurants, and sold large. He even managed to play the hurricanes right through some left-handed deals by insurance brokers he wined and dined on a regular basis. He was mayor when he died in ’59 running for an uncontested third straight term in office. He left behind a wife (already in her mid 60’s) and a teen-age son. The only child the marriage ever produced even though for years they’d tried. And then: bang, she was pregnant at forty-four. The doctor said it’d be a miracle if she carried to term, another miracle if the baby was born with only mild physical or mental defects. Big Bill believed the doctor full of shit and told him so. He said it was a wonder anybody got delivered alive with the “medical whackos we got around here,” and vowed to prove the man wrong with an unassisted home birth. Of course the doctor knew of Robertson’s reputation and did his best to talk the man down, but it was to no effect. Big Bill kept his wife at home and delivered his son himself (under the eye of a midwife) to spite the sonofabitch.
And the boy turned out fine, the spitting image of his old man with just a paintbrush sketch of his mother behind the lines. The townsfolk wrung their hands in envy and wiped their brows contemplating his good fortune. Some estimated Big Bill’s wealth at 100 million, some at 200. In actuality, it was just shy of 30 million, but with the median salary at the time around $15,000 a year it didn’t really make a helluva lot of difference. In the mix was also over a quarter million acres of land both in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The old man’s list of friends read like a Republican fund raiser list. The boy would have been able to do anything in the world. Absolutely anything at all. It just so happened he wanted to be a deputy sheriff.
Perhaps if Big Bill had lived a little longer things would have been different for his only son. Maybe he would’ve been able to talk his boy into something less dangerous, more prestigious maybe. After all, here was a young man with unlimited resources. Why not investments like his old man or even a construction company? Little Will told Big Bill several times he intended on becoming a sheriff, but of course the old man laughed it off, said it was ‘kid’s stuff’. After all, every boy wanted to be a cop or fireman, didn’t they? he’d laugh, pounding one of his friends on the back. That’s what kept the toy manufacturers cranking out all those rescue vehicles, ladder trucks, paddy wagons. Most of them grew out of it by the time they got to high school. And so Big Bill died believing his son’s wish was no more than a whim of childhood. He was hardly two years in the grave when William entered the police academy.
Of course when he was done, as Big Bill would have expected, Will came dutifully home to mother, living in the families’ rambling and largely vacant estate until she died at the age of seventy-three. He worked for the Broward County Sheriff’s Department then (his checks on automatic deposit or they would have never been cashed at all), and only missed two work days up until that fat
eful day in ‘82 when she passed. One for the wake and one for the funeral. Then he was back as if nothing had happened, the only sign of grief the fact that he put in double shifts continually for the next four months.
He moved out of the family home during this period. Nailed sheets of three-quarter inch plywood over the doors and windows, let the yard go wild. One day a pre-fabricated Martin Home was spotted weaving its way beneath the power lines of Millburg, headed out toward the Robertson place. He had the thing set up directly behind his parents’ house at such an angle from the street that no one could see it, at least not until you’d left the drive, but not many people did because of the firearms and dogs. And that was where he lived until September 16, 1982.
That was the day of the Harley Davidson convention in Biloxi. It was billed to be the biggest payday in years for the town and since being a sheriff gave him a pretty broad scope, William signed on for crowd control. It wasn’t so bad: two days comp at the beach watching over a lot of drunk bikers. They’d come before and never caused much trouble, and it wasn’t like Will Jr. couldn’t appreciate a good scrap every now and again. There were plenty of guys at his former high school who would have readily attested to that.
On the second night it happened. A big, keg party on the beach got out of hand. Several idiots showed up on Hondas. “Fuckin rice-eater’s bikes” in the vernacular of the Harley crew who were drunker and in greater numbers. Robertson had been sitting in his squad car not two hundred feet away (making sure the bonfire on the beach didn’t get out of hand) when a little bit of ribbing turned into a full-blown argument. A Biloxi unit had been right down the way, but the situation didn’t looked like anything Will couldn’t handle himself. A little straight-forward authority with hand firmly on the butt of a revolver tended to get things cleared up pretty fast.