Border Songs (30 page)

He followed Foxhurst toward the border, then veered off into dirt toward the big swamp. Setting out on foot, with night goggles now, he scanned the trees and sky for pulses of life. He reported to the supervisor that he saw plenty of tracks leading into the woods but couldn’t gauge their age, which triggered second-guessing grumbles about chasing swamp ghosts when so much shit was going down in the valley.

The swamp wasn’t even considered a smuggling route, as there was
no easy route through or around it. Despite being larger than most lakes in the county, it was of so little interest that nobody had ever bothered to name it, though Brandon had always considered it the best place to find marsh wrens or Virginia rails.

He headed into the soggy woodlands toward the border, looking for tracks, trails or any warm-blooded life-form that flashed white in his goggles. It was hard to hear anything over the sucking sound of his boots, so he kept stopping and listening before pushing on again. On one break he heard the distant foghorn of a great horned owl, but forced himself not to reply.

He picked a fast route through scraggly trees and shrubs where roots offered enough traction to almost jog. Then he froze at the squawk of a blue heron that flushed a brood of mallards. Brandon scanned the air for rising ducks, but saw nothing. They were farther away than they sounded. A nighthawk or an owl might have rousted their bunkhouse, or perhaps they’d heard him running. Regardless, he strode toward the commotion until the swamp opened up. Here he stopped again and crouched, scanning the water and the sky and the water once more for motion, his gaze sweeping slowly across its surface. A raccoon or even an aggressive bass could have startled the birds, though he’d never seen a fish in this muck. He was about to resume wading when he saw something move. Through his goggles he could see its warm core. It was too large for a beaver or—then more ducks suddenly went berserk, and he lifted his goggles and shined a powerful beam on the muddy backside of a large man crouched hip-deep in sludge.

He appeared to be wearing army fatigues over a wetsuit that went up over his head, frogman-style, a large neoprene tube strapped to his back.

“Border Patrol!” Brandon shouted.

The man lunged deeper into the swamp. A car slowed on Zero, killed its headlights and glided past, its hopeful passenger within thirty yards of the line and charging for it. If he got there before Brandon got
to him, he’d not only be free but could also stand on the other side and taunt him. This had happened to Dionne, who still fumed over it.

Brandon slogged diagonally away toward the shallower side, then galloped along its edge and, within fifteen yards of the border, holstered the flashlight and cut straight toward the man, charging through water up to his calves before finding a log to spring off. His foot slipped, so he got only half the launch he’d hoped for and splashed well short, chest-first. When he got up and sloshed ahead, the gasping man reached back into the top of his pack. That’s exactly when Brandon bear-hugged him as a truck howled past just twenty feet away on Zero. They both went underwater for a long moment, but this guy was so winded that Brandon soon felt like he was rescuing him. He practically dragged him to firmer ground, then slapped on handcuffs and propped him against a stump.

It was hard to see what this one looked like even with a flashlight. His face was painted green and black, his eyes wild, his mustache long, his mouth a noisy funnel. Listening to him wheeze, Brandon examined the backpack. Whatever had been in the top compartment was no longer there, but in the main sack he found plastic-wrapped bricks of money on top of two double-wrapped bags of what he slowly realized were handguns.

S
HE FELT
stapled to the recliner across from three young diggers on her tattered sofa, beneath which she’d hid almost $14,000. The floor between them was mined with Subway wrappers, Burger King sacks and Pizza Hut boxes, the coffee table an avalanche of grease-stained magazines and unopened mail. Why was her bedroom door wide open, or as wide as it could get without plowing into jeans, bras and towels? Her bed looked ransacked. Had she dozed off? She recalled snatches of conversation, but who with?

There were four of them now, sharing a joint and talking high on the inhale like kids sucking helium. The couch boys looked like they’d survived a dust storm together. Looking closer, she recognized one—Maniac—she couldn’t stand. The clean, older guy on the footstool was familiar, too: Duval. When he pitched forward to load a bong, a pistol grip rose from his coat pocket like an Afro comb.

What time was it, anyway?

When she’d moved in almost two months ago, she never saw the diggers. That was how it was supposed to be. They entered from the rear, had their own toilet and weren’t even supposed to come in for water. Toby told her they were digging a subterranean grow twice the size of the one with all the ducks. He’d move her again, he promised, before a single seed was planted. Meanwhile, he said, just stay clear of the barn; the less you know, the more convincing your innocence. You’re renting the place to be near your sick father and have no idea what, if anything, the owner does in his barn.

But the less Toby was around, the more his rules were ignored, and he hadn’t spent the night since the helicopter fiasco. He’d apologized repeatedly for hitting on her so clumsily and had barely touched her since. But he gave her more work than ever, and she knew it wouldn’t be completely over until he let her quit.

Diggers shuffled in and out now as if she ran a halfway house for construction stoners. It was almost fun at first, having people to play with at any hour, though the crew kept changing. When one of them rotated his shoulders, she noticed the heft and snout of another gun.

“Everyone knows a CIA lab in Laos refined heroin in the seventies,” Duval began, as if answering a question. “Then they used Noriega, of course, to trade guns for coke with the Contras in the eighties. Remember that? And in the nineties, it’s undisputed that the agency supplied the camels to haul opium to labs along the Afghan-Paki border. So why would the U.S. allow the legalization of cannabis when it knows it would forfeit its ability to manipulate the world?”

“But like what does pot have to do with all that?” one of the dust-balls asked. “I mean, ya know, what does—”

“Everything starts with cannabis,” Duval explained. “Everything.”

“Amen,” Maniac said. “She gets too fucked up.”

Her eyelids fluttered. Who else could he be talking about?

“He needs to either get her out of here or …”

She couldn’t hear what he said next, but then Duval added, “Well, she didn’t get here by keeping her legs crossed.”

By the time her eyes snapped open Toby had sprung through the front door, shadowed by Fisher.

“Let’s go,” Fisher told the diggers, and Toby rummaged around in the kitchen for a clean water glass. “Drive slow.” He wheeled a hand to get them moving. “And stay off Zero.”

The dustballs exited swiftly, as if trying to slip out before Toby finished hand-washing a glass to his satisfaction. He then opened two windows and stood before her, sipping water as if it were gin. “Told you not to party in here, and didn’t I say there should never be any bud
on the premises? Could’ve sworn I said that.” He turned to Fisher, then swung back to her. “Or am I losing my mind?”

“You’d know better than I would.”

He stared at her, then strolled to her bedroom, nursing the water, pushing the door and looking down at the laundry. “You better start taking better care of yourself.”

“Or?” she asked, still startled by what the stoners had said. She cleared her throat, realizing she might cry, and held out callused and lacerated fingers. “Who else is gonna grow your goddamn plants?”

He raised a hand of his own, as if to slap her, then just said, “Please.”

Her payouts were half of what they used to be. He blamed a slumping U.S. dollar but, according to Fisher, it had more to do with Vancouver ops getting ripped off, which had only intensified Toby’s mole hunt.

“A little birdy just informed me about something.” He rocked his skull from side to side like a prizefighter. “Your clumsy childhood pal, as you’ve described him, intercepted another load tonight. Imagine that. A big one, too. An
important
one.”

“Three hundred and twenty thou,” Fisher added, “and thirteen—”

Toby cut him off with an eyebrow, then examined her. “Talk to him recently? No? Well, you might ask what tipped him off because there were no sensors, no cameras, no nothing. We’ve never lost a load through that swamp before. So he obviously got a tip, eh? Or are you gonna suggest it’s just dumb luck again?” He stepped closer, head swiveling, eyes wiggling. “I didn’t realize you’d dated Monty. Some coincidence, isn’t it? Your clumsy pal stumbles upon a smuggler you went out with?”

She glanced at Fisher, who wouldn’t make eye contact, and cleared her throat again.

“Having trouble speaking?” Toby asked. “Get you some water?”

“I haven’t talked to Brandon since that lunch I told you all about.” It was hard not to slur.

Toby shaped his left hand like a pistol and pointed it at her chest. “If your friend’s as unassuming as you say, why not just ask him where he’s getting all his tips? I should think you’d be motivated to help me find that answer.”

“I’ve got a couple questions of my own,” she rasped.

“By all means.”

“What happened to your no-pesticides policy?”

Bruised skin twitched beneath his left eye. In the background, Fisher was patting the air and shaking his head, mouthing,
not tonight
.

“And what about your no-weapons policy?” she asked. “What happened to that?”

“Let me know what Brandon says,” Toby said after a long stare, then led Fisher out the door.

A half hour later, she braced herself against the kitchen sink and listened to her messages. One from Nicole reminding her of their father’s birthday party. The nerve. Another from Helen at the nursery, wondering if she was still
sick
. Her father had called as well, “just checking in,” trying not to sound worried. She looked through the window and across the border to where the Crawfords’ and the Moffats’ lights were burning. Beyond them, the Vanderkools’ porch bulb. And was the basement light on too? She splashed her face and chugged water from the faucet, rinsing her mouth and soaking her hair, then walked outside.

B
RANDON PAINTED
from memory. He started out realistically, then veered toward the abstract until only what had to be there remained, a green-black face with domineering eyebrows and a long mustache. He painted fast, a productive frenzy coming on.

His mind shuffled images from the night: the mallards’ hysterics, the smuggler’s heaving wheeze, the chief’s giddiness afterward, bursting disheveled into the bullpen, wearing jeans and his wife’s reading glasses, brainstorming on a catchy nickname for the smuggler and settling on Swamp Man.

The gentle knock was enough to trip the three-dog alarm, Leo’s yip followed by Maggie’s yap and Clyde’s startled half-bark. Brandon thought it was a false alarm until he saw Madeline standing on the other side of the glass door, her arms and ankles crossed, as if she’d been watching for some time. She looked wrung out, but it was her!

He quieted the dogs with a toothy whistle, then slid the door open. “You okay?”

“Me?” She looked at him, barefoot and shirtless in paint-smothered jeans, green and black smudges winding up his muscled torso, his eyes blurry. She smelled paint, sour laundry, damp dogs and basement mildew. A monotone behind him said, “Blue grouse,” and after a few seconds there was a hollow sound, like someone blowing into a beer bottle.

“Half of your hair’s wet,” he said. “You look …”

Her smile tightened as she squatted to pet the wagging mutts. “Drunk? Hope I didn’t set off any sensors.”

“Where’d you cross?” Brandon sent the dogs to their pads with a finger snap.

She told him. He bunched his lips and shook his head.

The monotone spoke again—“red-breasted nuthatch”—followed by evenly spaced beeps, like a truck backing up.

“What’re we listening to?”

“Bird Songs of the Puget …”
He stepped toward the stereo. “I’ll turn it off.”

“Leave it,” she said.

He started to speak but just stared at her with a half smile, as if he’d lost an amusing thought on the way to his lips.

She followed his eyes to one of his Rorschachs—complete or in progress, she had no idea. Two cold eyes above a familiar mustache. “Wow! Whatcha got there?”

“The guy I found tonight in the swamp.”

She cut her laugh off. “You paint the people you—”

“All of them.” He made a circular motion with his finger. “Every last one.”

She took in the entire room for the first time. An extra-long, king-sized bed with neither foot- nor headboards. Bedside books stacked vertically. A desk and easels that came up to her shoulders. Gallon jugs of water. Three dogs curled on individual flying-saucer pads of ascending size. Canvases stacked a half dozen deep against every wall. A lamp in the middle with a moose silhouette on its shade.

“Double-crested cormorant,” said the robotic voice before a screech like nails being wrenched from wood.

Brandon showed her more canvases stacked near the bathroom, talking in gusts about whom he caught where and what they did or said.

“These’re amazing,” Madeline said, squatting on her haunches to get closer.

“Yeah?”

“Not just for you, for anybody. But if you can make people look so real, why make them seem so weird most of the time?”

He hesitated. “I’m not trying to be a camera.”

“How’d you catch that guy tonight, Brandon?” His cockeyed expression made her worry he was onto her. “I mean, did a sensor go off, or did you catch him on camera or something?”

“No.”

“Somebody tip you? Some homeowner? Or a Canadian?”

Again he studied her, as if straining to translate a language he almost understood. “No.”

“Well,” she pressed, her mouth drying out, “so why are you always in the right spot at the right time?”