Toughing It Page 3

  Pen started the car hard and blew us out of there. “Okay, where to?” he asked me.

  We went from trailer to trailer, shack to shack. I’m not usually the kind to go up to strange people’s houses and knock on their doors, but then Dillon was not usually dead, either. Whenever I found somebody home, I asked them if they’d seen anything or heard anything to tell who killed him. Nobody knew anything, but I got the feeling they would tell me what I needed to know if they could. These were river people. I know river people. Nobody outside cares about us much, including cops, and sometimes we don’t even care about ourselves until something bad happens, but at least then we stick together. I didn’t have to explain to anybody what had happened to Dillon. Everybody I talked with had already heard.

  “Try a bar?” Pen suggested when we started running out of trailers and shacks.

  “Closed on Sunday.”

  He rolled his eyes at himself. “Duh! Stupid.” He started to shoot himself in the head with his finger, then got a peculiar look on his face and scratched his ear instead.

  I knew what we had to do next. It had been hanging like a skeleton at the back of my mind all afternoon. I said, kind of low, “While it’s still good and light I want to go up the mountain again. I want to show you where it happened and find out who lives in that cabin.”

  He got real serious right away. “Shawn, no.”

  “Maybe you can see something I didn’t.”

  “Not goddamn likely. That’s not what’s going to happen, and you know it.”

  “So what’s going to happen?” I asked him. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s what I’ve got to find out.”

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  I told him, “Look, you don’t have to come,” and I turned around and started hiking. We were parked not far from the foot of the Jeep trail. In a minute I heard him puffing along behind me, and I slowed down to let him catch up. He was out of shape.

  Between puffs he said, “Don’t—you care—if you get—yourself killed?”

  I shook my head. It was the truth, I didn’t. I wished it was me that had got killed in the first place. I wished it was me instead of Dillon.

  “You care—if you get—me killed?”

  I didn’t answer, but I took us off the Jeep trail into the woods, where we had more cover, and I said, “Quiet.” We eased along. I was always quiet in the woods, not rustling leaves, not breaking sticks, because I liked to see the animals. Kind of a habit. Pen knew how to walk that way, too. Probably he had been a hunter, maybe a good one—though I was no good, I always got buck fever. I saw deer but never shot them.

  We didn’t see or hear anything unusual. Crows yelled at us. I hate crows. They’re like people who mind everybody else’s business. The crows just had to tell everything and anybody on Sid’s Mountain that we were coming.

  I took us to the cabin first, because cutting through the woods it was kind of on the way. When I say cabin I don’t mean a log cabin, but it wasn’t a summer cottage, either, or a shack like some of the ones along the river. It was a tight little wood-shingled place, and there was a thread of smoke coming out of the stone chimney. Walking up, I thought I saw movement in a window. But when I knocked at the door nobody came.

  I knocked again. “Open up, damn you,” I muttered.

  “Don’t get yourself in a hissy fit,” Pen said. I guess he was afraid I would try to put my fist through the door, like I did with his store window.

  It was a strange place. I had lots of time to look around, waiting on the doorstep, and I noticed one thing especially: There was no driveway. Not even a dirt road leading in or out. Whoever lived here, didn’t they ever go for groceries or anything?

  “Come on,” Pen said. “Nobody’s home.”

  “He’s in there,” I said. “I can smell him.” I was almost sure I had heard somebody moving around inside. But there was nothing we could do about it, so we left.

  “Watch for snakes,” I told Pen as we headed up the mountain. I didn’t want him putting his hand in a nest of copperheads as we climbed the rocks.

  Pen was puffing hard by the time we got up the steep rocky part, so I stopped to let him breathe. I could see yellow streaks of police tape through the trees. We were close. I looked around and listened, but I couldn’t hear anything except Pen panting.

  Still hidden in the woods, we walked close enough for him to see. “Here it is,” I whispered.

  He nodded and stood looking at—nothing, really. A square of mountainside. A dirt track with maybe a little blood fertilizing it. What the hell was I expecting him to tell me?

  “The son of a bitch rigged a shotgun up there,” I whispered, pointing, trying to explain. “About four and a half feet above the ground. With string across the road for somebody to break. Black, so they wouldn’t see it till it was too late.”

  Pen nodded some more, and we moved around a little. Then we saw something else.

  “Jeez,” I said, “there’s my clothes.” Downhill a few yards, outside the taped-off area, a brown paper bag was still sitting on the Jeep track.

  “That’s yours?” Pen whispered.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m surprised the cops didn’t take it.”

  “Like I told you, they don’t give a shit. They haven’t even been up here.”

  “But I thought you told them you got shot at.”

  “I did.” We weren’t whispering anymore. We had both forgotten to be afraid. I walked out of the woods, grabbed my bag of clothes, and picked it up the way I’d carry a sack of groceries, between my arm and my chest.

  “Don’t move!” Pen shouted.

  I froze, because I felt it at the same time he saw it: something squirming around in the bag.

  “Don’t move, Tuff,” Pen said quietly. How did he know to call me that? From my mother, probably. “Don’t blink, don’t breathe. It’s a big granddaddy copperhead, and he’s poking his head out right by your face. Don’t move.”

  I tried to do what he said. I clenched my teeth and tried to hold still, even though I wanted to shake and scream. I’m not any more afraid of snakes than the average person, but this was different. I could feel the snake’s muscles bulging through the paper bag. I could feel his forked tongue sniffing my neck.

  “Just hang on,” Pen said. “Hold real still.” I could hear by his voice that he was inching close.

  I stared straight ahead, not moving my eyes to look even when Pen eased close enough that I could see him, because I was afraid I might move my head. God, I was afraid.

  Pen soft-footed up until he was only a couple feet away, almost close enough for the snake to get him, too. “Okay,” he said, “when I say, you drop the bag and jump. Okay?” The way he asked a question, I almost nodded, but just in time he warned, “Don’t move!” and I caught myself. “Not until I say,” he told me. “I’m waiting for him to come out a little farther.…”

  I was so scared I felt sick.

  Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash, a blur.

  “Now! Jump!”

  I jumped like a rabbit. I think I threw the bag more than dropped it. But even before I did anything, Pen had the copperhead. I wouldn’t have believed he could move that fast. The blur I had seen was his hand. He had grabbed the snake right behind its head, and he stood there holding it. It didn’t seem to bother him the way the thing was hissing and thrashing around, even though it was almost as long as he was tall.

  “Don’t go near that bag yet,” he told me, and he walked into the woods with the snake, then came back without it.

  “You okay, son?”

  I nodded. “Thanks,” I whispered. I could barely talk. My heart was pounding, and I felt shaky. I guess I wanted to live after all.

  “You’re welcome.” Pen found himself a stick and started poking at the bag to see if something else would come out.

  Off in the woods, not too far away, somebody laughed. It was not a real laugh but the puton kind, a bad-guy laugh mea
nt for us to hear.

  Pen looked at me, and I looked at him, and we got out of there. The heck with my clothes. We didn’t stop running until we were halfway to the river road.

  Then we walked awhile and caught our breath. When we were almost to the road, I said what I was thinking. “Copperheads don’t just crawl into paper bags for fun.”

  “They might,” Pen said, “but I don’t think that one did.”

  I nodded. If it wasn’t for hearing that laugh, I might have thought finding a snake having a nap in my spare shirts was an accident. But the laugh had made it pretty clear: no accident. That copperhead was a message for me.

  4

  What the hell were you doing up there?” Detective Mohatt yelled at me over the phone when I told him about the copperhead and the guy laughing. “Just stay away from there.”

  That night he and a couple other cops came and asked me questions. Did I have enemies? Did Dillon have enemies? Tell them again how Dillon got killed. Was Dillon having a fight with anybody? Was he having a fight with me?

  “No,” I whispered. These guys were sick. Sure, Dillon and I fought sometimes, but—what they were thinking was sick.

  “Over a girl, maybe?”

  “No, dammit! I don’t have a girl.”

  “But he did.”

  Sure, because he was special. He wore T-shirts cut up to show his muscles, a chrome chain for a belt, black jeans, wild black hair, a million-dollar smile. “He had plenty. So what? He was my brother. Don’t you guys get it?” My voice rose.

  “Shawn,” Pen said quietly, to shush me, and I shut up, but only because he wanted me to. I owed him.

  Mohatt said, “They call you Tuff, right?”

  “Yes.” It came out real hard.

  “Just don’t get too damn tough with us, son.”

  The cops went away finally, but I couldn’t get to sleep. When Pen was asleep I got up and went outside, closing the door softly so I wouldn’t wake him, and walked across the street and through somebody’s yard to the riverbank. The spillway noise was loud in my ears, and I didn’t like the way the dam locked up the river into just another boring lake. I walked down to below the dam, and that was better, more like the river I was used to. The water was about a mile wide, but shallow, full of wild islands and white rapids and quartz rocks and light. I stood there a long time, just looking. In the rock pools below the dam the bass would be swarming, drunk with water rush and air bubbles. If Dillon was there we’d go wading out in the moonlight and try to catch them with our bare hands.

  How could he be gone? He was everywhere. In the night. In the light on the river. In every breath I took.

  Yet he was nowhere. Breathing hurt. Living hurt.

  Nobody understood. The cops didn’t understand. Damn them, they weren’t going to find Dillon’s killer. I had to do it. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I did.

  I did go back to bed and doze some, on toward morning.

  Monday. I hate Mondays. Pen woke me up and said, “Don’t you have school?”

  I shook my head.

  “C’mon, Shawn, it’s April, for God’s sake. I know you have school.”

  “I’m not going.” Maybe I would just quit. Go drinking on weekends and bash mailboxes. Get a job at a car wash, like Dillon. No, have a nighttime career, like stealing stereos out of cars. Get arrested. Spend the rest of my life in jail.

  “Okay, but get up.”

  Damn, he could be a pain in the ass. Of course, the guy was my father, so what did I expect. I got up.

  “Can we go nose around some more?” I asked him over breakfast.

  “You think you can stay away from poisonous reptiles and gunfire?”

  “I’ll stay away from Sid’s Mountain.” For now. Before I went back I needed to find out who lived in that cabin. And I needed to have a plan.

  And a weapon, probably.

  Pen said, “I’ve got a store to run, son. After closing time we can go someplace.”

  I moped around until he put me to work. He showed me how to feed the worms with coffee grounds and other kinds of garbage he collected from the neighbors. Feeding worms was not a high point in my life, especially since the way they writhed around reminded me of the copperhead, but Pen seemed to almost like them. After we were done with the worms, he sent me to dig weeds out of the cracks in the sidewalk while he made a bunch of phone calls. Then he gave me some money out of his cash drawer and sent me down the street to the Goodwill store to get myself a change of clothes. I had been in the same shirt and pants for three days. The Goodwill store isn’t exactly the fashion place to shop, but where I come from we don’t take no trips to Paris, so who cares. I found a couple things that kind of fit and came back with them and put them on.

  We had hot dogs for lunch. They reminded me of the worms. I didn’t eat much. After Pen ate he said, “Listen, Shawn, do you think you can run the store for a couple hours? I gotta go get some glass to replace the window.”

  I said, “I should have gone to school.”

  He grinned so wide I had to smile. I said, “Okay, go get your glass already.”

  He was gone more than a couple hours. People came in for milk and bait and stuff, but I still had plenty of time to be bored. That place was not exactly hopping with business. The store was empty in late afternoon when a girl who looked familiar walked in.

  My chest started to ache when I saw her, but I couldn’t think why. I couldn’t think who she was.

  She came straight up to me and said, “Tuff, how you doing?” The way she said it, like she meant it, told me she knew about Dillon.

  “Okay. I’m doing all right, I guess.” Who was she?

  She saw it in my face and said, “You don’t remember me, do you? Monica. Monica Zarfos. I know you from school.”

  Okay, that kind of explained it. She was one of those girls you see in the halls without really noticing. Plain brownish hair pulled back. Plain face. Short legs. Baggy clothes. Probably had all the right body parts, but I’d never know from looking at her in those clothes. Nothing special about her.

  Yeah, knowing her from school kind of explained it, but not really. Why did seeing her make me hurt all over?

  Monica said, “You came to my place to phone the ambulance.”

  Oh, my God.

  She said, “I went back up the mountain with you. I know you don’t remember. You were in shock.”

  Damn straight.

  She said, “After I saw what happened to Dillon, I went home and cried. I cried till I was sick.”

  My heart went hot. Hearing her say it made me want to cry myself, and hug her and kiss her and laugh all at once, because somebody cared besides me.

  I didn’t do any of those things, but I blurted out, “You want something to eat?”

  We got Scooter Crunch bars out of the store’s freezer and sat on the steps out front to eat them. I figured Pen wouldn’t mind. Too bad if he did. But I figured he wouldn’t.

  Monica asked me, “So how are you, really?”

  “You came here to see me? Not to buy worms or something?”

  “Noooo, I came to buy worms. Jeez.” She wasn’t mad, just teasing. “Would you answer my question? Are you going to be okay?”

  “I guess.” I hadn’t thought about me much. “I just want to find out who killed him.”

  “I heard.” She pulled her lips back from her teeth to bite off bits of her ice cream. “I heard you were asking around. That’s what everybody wants, to get the guy who did him. You should have heard people talking in school today. Nobody’s talking about anything else.”

  I should have gone to school, no damn joke. I asked, “What were they saying?”

  “Lots of stuff.” Monica started to smile, but not like she was happy. “You should have seen it. There’s about six girls all crying and saying they were his girlfriend and fighting with each other over who gets to wear black.”

  I have to admit I was interested. “Who?”

  She told me some names. “Did he
really go with any of them?”

  “No.” Maybe he played around with them, but he would have told me if he really liked somebody.

  “That makes me feel a little better. I—I had kind of a crush on Dillon.” She was looking down, not at me. She sat there with her ice cream melting over her hands, and I didn’t know what to say. She missed him, too. In a weird way that made me feel better and very grateful to her. But I didn’t know how to tell her what I felt.

  So I got a napkin and wiped one of her hands. She looked at me and took the napkin and finished the job herself.

  “It’s no big deal,” she said.

  I tried to make conversation. “So what else is going on in school?”

  “Oh, the Student Council took up a collection for the funeral, and the guidance counselor made one of those If-you-need-to-talk-I’m-here announcements, you know—”

  “Wait a minute.” Had I heard her right? “They’re collecting money for a funeral for Dillon?”

  “Sure. A lot of people are. There’s cans and boxes in all the stores. Didn’t you know about it?” Monica sat blinking at me.

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, there are.”

  “Jeez,” I said, “people are gonna give him a real funeral?”

  “Looks like it.” Then she eyed my Goodwill pants.

  “You thinking maybe I better get some real clothes to wear?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, “maybe you better,” and the look she gave me was so funny that all of a sudden I was laughing. We were both laughing. I wouldn’t have believed I could laugh like that anymore.

  A rusty old Chevy came down the street. “There’s my ride,” Monica said, and she jumped up.

  “Wait, Monica.” I stood up and stretched out my hand to her. “Come back. I’ve got to ask you something. Who do they think killed Dillon?”

  She turned to look at me. Her ride was stopped in the middle of the road, waiting.

  “Monica,” I begged.

  She stared at me like she was scared, and then she was gone.

  Pen came back with a pane of glass packaged in cardboard so big it stuck out of his trunk. “How much did that cost you?” I wanted to know. For some reason his insurance didn’t cover it. I had asked.