Beast of the Field (24 page)

33.

The wild dogs of those east woods had burrows they stole from badgers and raccoons when these storms swept over their territory.  When the birds went silent or took to the sky, when that mineral smell came on the air, they knew it was time to get to work opening up a place to hide.  In the rain after the tornado they squeezed back out of these holes, sniffing.  The storm had taken the day's light with it, which suited them.  They moved through the woods with their snouts to the ground until they located and gathered around the shaking, shining wet horse, still strapped to a buggy.  The horse was strong, and smart, and their attempts at surrounding it, moving in on it, biting at it, brought them only pain and frustration.  A few of the dogs climbed onto the buggy, but there was nothing there for them either.  So they waited.  They sat on their bellies with their tongues out, waiting in the bushes for the horse to tire.

It was a long time before the men came.  They smelled them before they heard their voices.  They were coming back from deeper in the woods, dragging a body of meat by the legs.  The white hoods they wore to hide their faces meant nothing to the dogs: from scent alone they knew these men well. 

"...I got him, I got him.  Son of a bitch is heavier than he looks.  Come on you, bastard!" said one of them.  He put his boot hard into the ribs of the body they dragged.  They pulled him by his legs, so that his head, arms and hands were jostled along the ground.  The face on the body was covered in blood, the dogs noticed with their eyes and noses.  His shirt was nearly torn off, displaying more gashes along his sides.  The dogs closest to the scene recognized the smell of the fresh body, associated it with the freezing nights of last winter.

A man walked behind him, older than the other two.  He moved slowly as the two younger men in front of him pulled the body along the path.

The one who carried the gun said, "That bastard mayor sure likes to give orders, don't he, Pa.  Making us wait till midnight in that cabin till we can get to our business.  We got houses too, don’t we?  We got crops to check over."

"Shut your mouth, boy.  You aint got no goddamn crops."

"He has a point, Pa," the one who comes to fill the jars said.  "Just 'cause he doesn't want his hands dirty, or that white suit a his.  Hell, it wasn't none of us who wanted Tommy dead.  It wasn't none of our daughters he was poking."

"You shut up too.  You'll get your pay, like always.  Remember, this is the man t
hat allows you to run those bottles out of here.  Besides, now Tommy's gone you can get after his scraps.  That's what you want aint it?"

The one who fills the jars was quiet now.

They reached the buggy behind the horse; the younger men dropped the legs to the wet ground.  "What about Uncle Jake?  He in on this too?  He's the one who really lets us run our stills."

"You don't say a word about this to Jake.  Not now, not ever.  Jake is close with Donnan.  W
e’re lucky for that storm—kept him busy enough, I reckon.  In fact, we best be done with this business before he come around looking for us, or for him," he said, gesturing to the ground with one finger.

The men were quiet for a minute.  The dogs sniffed at the scent they threw.  The horse smelled better.

"What now Pa?"

The old man moved past them now, his eyes cast through the trees towards the open fields.  "Get him up in that buggy.  Let's get him to the road." 

They hefted the meat to the back of the wagon, letting the legs dangle down.  One of the men walked in front of the horse, leading it by its leather.  A few of the hungrier dogs slinked behind the buggy as it passed from the trees to the field, the body's legs hanging off one side like strips of meat.  The men stopped again just as the mud on the path met the road.

"Get him down.  Lay him down, feet towards the front, like that."  He waited.  "Now pour some of that corn on him." 

The one with the bad leg and the gun poured liquid from a jar over the front side of the body.  He kicked it again, spraying wet dirt into his face.  "You got to eat a peck of dirt before you die, aint that the old saying?"  They all three chuckled at this.  "I hope I aint too late."  They chuckled some more.  Took turns with the jar at their lips.

The older man looked down at their body.  "You get that watch yet?"

"You, Gomer!" the other one said as the gun holder took two items from the jacket of the dead body—one item was black and held only papers, the other was shiny and hung from a shiny chain.  He held it up in the night for all of them to see.

“She was supposed to give that to me,” said the other one. 

"Abner wants it back," the older man said.  He snapped the chain and pocketed the round part.  "Here, take the chain.  Gimme that cash too.  Now get rid of that wallet."

The younger one dragged his leg to an old stump, stuffed the items inside,
returned to the buggy.

"Now get his legs up in there, in the axel."

"In the axel?"

"Do it, boy."

They did it.  It took some effort.

"He in there good?
  Check him, make sure."             

"What about this here bundle of letters from the cabin, Pa?"

"Let me see them."  The man flipped through the envelopes, quickly, then tossed them back to his son.  "Them too, put ‘em in the buggy—there under the seat.  We don't want anything lying around connecting us to this mess.  Stick 'em in there good."

The younger man reached over the side of the buggy.  "Pa, why we leavin' his billfold here if we don't—"

"Because if no one believes he was thrown in the storm, maybe they’ll believe it was bandits had a hand in this.  Get the law sniffing after someone else.  But I don't want this stuff anywhere near me.  You hid 'em good, didn't you?"

"Yep, I did."

"Good.  Now stand back."  The older one stepped to the wagon.  From his hip he drew a pistol.  The dogs recognized that pistol too.  He held the pistol up, fired three times as fast as he could.  This sent even the hungriest dogs scurrying back to the trees.  A few of them looked back to see they were not the only animals scared of guns, for that big horse was running faster than they were, though it was in the opposite direction.

When the men had passed them on their back into the woods, however, the dogs set out again, followed the scent and the trail of human blood on the road.  They followed the horse through farm roads and up and down the two-rutted automobile road, until it finally found its way home, and stopped in front of a farm house.  The horse was tired now, and so they could get at that meat it had been dragging behind it without it kicking at them.

34.

Through the screen of her open bedroom window, Millie breathed in the still night air.  She listened hard, her nose flattened against the mesh, but heard only the sawing of crickets, not a single thing else.  It was a completely windless night.   There was something happening out there, her partner might be in serious trouble, and all of a sudden there wasn't enough wind to turn a hanging leaf sideways.  Millie paced from the window to her bedroom door, where she could hear the sleeping sounds of the family—Junior's creaky-tree tossing noises in his bed, Pa's steady breathing—then back to the window, where there wasn't enough wind to bend cigarette smoke.  Tonight, when she needed it most, the wind had turned on her.

On the windy nights, Millie could all but just walk out the front door knowing any noise she made would either be lost in the clatter or simply dismissed by Mother as the wind.  Too bad for her, tonight was not one of those nights.  Tonight there wasn't enough
breeze to float a dandelion seed, much less escape the house.

She went again to her bedroom door.  She leaned her head out into the hallway, heard the spurts of snoring from Junior's room she had been waiting to hear.  On her toes, boots in hand, she crept down the hall, went down the stairs with the pads of her feet right next to the wall, where the stairs creaked less, and floated through the darkness of the living room and kitchen to the back porch.  Jumpy issued one sleepy bark at her as she ran to the barn. 
“Hush, goddamnit,” she whisper-hollered.

She went past the bicycle to the tack room, took a bridle from the wall.  “Good girl, that’s it. 
Tick-tick.
  Now hold still while I buckle this thing, we’re going to help Mr. Sterno nail these sonbitches that killed Tommy.”  She led Sonnet quietly from the barn to the gate, leapt and pulled herself to the bare back of the horse Indian-style, then Millie squeezed her heels—the heels of Tommy’s boots this filly knew well—and they were gone.

*

There was no light for Charlie Sterno tonight.  Above him, just before he ducked into the woods, the stars had seemed numerous enough, brilliant enough to offer at least a little bit of their own light in way of help, but starlight was just a trick.  Then again, he thought, maybe tonight he was better off in the dark.  He had his torch anyway, though the battery was going on him and he would have to use it wisely.  He would get used to the darkness after a while.  If he did or if he didn't, he still had to find that creek bed he saw on the Helmcamp woman's map.

He had taken his car to just feet from the edge of the woods, ran it over some new saplings and young bushes, so that when he was in far enough, the vegetation sprang back to where it had been before the car had passed over it.

Sterno found the ruts of an old road, a cow path.  Any cow path is going to lead to water, he thought, so he followed it deeper into the woods.  Not two steps into the trees and it was like no other world existed except for this one of darkness.  Ten steps in and the beam of his torch faltered and faded quickly until it was gone.  He swore, dropped the torch to the long grass beside the path, pressed on as a blind man.

*

Sonnet seemed to be flying through the darkness.  That bit about finding Tommy’s killers had taken hold of her. 

Finally Millie saw the taillights of a car.  When she reined Sonnet back,
she listened over her huffing until she could hear the bubbly idling of its engine.  She was glad to see Mr. Sterno's car, but something kept her from moving any closer to it.  A thought struck her:  if she were a Pinkerton man, snooping around someone else's property, she would not leave her car running, with its headlamps blazing, where God and anyone else who wanted to could see it.  She left Sonnet grazing in a hay field by the side of the road, moved closer through these same weeds, giving the taillights a wide berth.  There was no way to see either her or the horse in this dark; it was all a matter of staying quiet. 

From her crouching position in the weeds she saw the man standing in the beams of light from the headlamps.  These headlamps did not belong to Mr. Sterno's car.  It was not Mr. Sterno lit up in them. 

The man had his back to the car.  The back brim of his torn-up fedora shaded his head from view.  A small rifle could be seen leveled across his body at hip level.  She thought she recognized that gun, and when the man took off his hat to wipe off his brow, Millie saw that it was no man at all, but Gomer Neuwald.  That gun was the one she had seen in the woods behind the schoolhouse.  Gomer was watching someone return to the car along the tractor path.

"You saw right, Gomer," his brother said.  Millie watched him stick a pistol into the back of his waistband.  "That’s his car right over there in those bushes."

"The sumbitch is on our property.  He got some minerals, aint he?"  Gomer packed his cheek with tobacco. 

Geshen scratched under his hat, looked back at the trees.  "You think he can find that shed by
himself?"

"Nawp," Gomer said through his juice.  "And who gives a good goddamn if he does?"

Geshen turned to his brother with a mean look in his eye.  He used his hands to shield his eyes from the headlamps.  "Come on, you dunce.  We better wake up the goddamn mayor."

She waited until the little pink dots on the back end of the car were no longer visible before starting to the woods.  “You wait here,” she told Sonnet.  “But if I don’t come out of these woods soon, you better go get Junior.”

*

A creek bed slowed Sterno’s pace to nearly a stop.  The dips, climbs, rocks, twists and fallen trees did their best to keep him from getting his mayor, but he kept moving.

He tried to recall what he had seen on that map of Tess Helmcamp's.  He remembered seeing the creek line.  He felt dizzy in his head and he could bring no images, no information forth.  There was a ringing in his ear that made thought nearly impossible.  Perhaps he’d lost too much blood, or perhaps he’d drunk too much whisky.  He remembered, barely, blurrily, the road and the Neuwald farm and how the creek ran north-south between them.  He recalled seeing a small round pond on the map, and thought if someone had wanted to put up a sporting cabin, that pond was the place to do it.

At that moment a flash of light caught his eye.  He reeled toward the light, because something about it reminded him of the dream.  He stood blinking at the lights, waiting to see her, waiting to hear a river, but none of this happened.  The light swung to the side, leaving his field of vision.  He thought he heard an engine, moving on the road to the west.  It was not a dream, but a car.  The light had been headlamps and the car to which they were fastened was moving south, toward town. 

This snapped his mind to attention. He quickened his pace, putting more faith in his instincts as he traversed the creek stones.  After a few minutes he nearly fell on a small stack of rocks like the ones he had been tripping over for the last fifteen minutes, except these seemed to be stacked there by hand.  He stretched his leg over.  "Jesus—!"

When he was done falling he lay on his back.  His jawbone wanted him dead all over again, but it was a sharp and cold pain screaming up at him from his leg that had him clinching his teeth now.  He felt the pants, the ankle.  His pants and his skin were both ripped open, and even in the black of night, he could see the inky blood on his fingers. 

Both legs, now, he thought.              Time for a cigarette, he thought.

He struck a match and in that first flare he saw around him the outline of a rim of land, jagged and grown over and riddled with sticks and rocks.  Beyond this rim was black.  A second match confirmed that he was in a crater of some so
rt.  The pond.  Those rocks he had been dancing with up there were the dam.

He rolled a sloppy and thick one, pulled out the loose strands from each end, struck another match.  He smoked without hurrying.  It was a good cigarette. 

Now he could get back to work.  Once standing, his head reached above the rim of the crater.  Moving his feet he turned around three hundred and sixty degrees where he stood, eyes straining against the darkness.  He saw it then, a square-shaped hole in the darkness.  He struck a match and sent it flying in the direction of the shape, saw in the quick flare up of matchlight the front of a sagging fishing cabin.

For the moment, he remained in the bottom of the pond.  This was in part because his ankles and jaw kept him from moving, but also because he had yet another, different feeling about the bottom of the pond.  Maybe something he smelled.  In darkness like this, he was almost totally running on feeling.  He felt around on the ground until he found a stick, about a foot long with small wooden tines on one end.  Around this end he wrapped his handkerchief.  After a lengthy pull from his flask, he wetted the wadded handkerchief.  He struck another match, put it to the cloth, and at last he had light.

Immediately, he knew there was something under this dirt.  The weeds were much taller here than elsewhere.  The humps and raises in the pond's bottom were not something a man would leave if he were digging out a pond.  He moved his makeshift torch along the dirt.  The humps of dirt were sloppy, wildly scratched-out holes, where some animals had been trying to dig up what was underneath.  He went to one of these mounds, stuck the unlighted end of his torch into the ground, used it to loosen the dirt so he could feel around.

It took less time than he thought it would.  His fingernails ran across something that was not dirt, not wood, but felt a littl
e like both.  He cleared away the earth around what he had found with one hand while with the other he brought his flame close to it.  It was burned black, whatever it had been.  Flakes and pieces of charred material came away in his hands.  He dug a little deeper, until he discovered it was not earth he was digging into but the clothes of a man.  A tweed suit, once.