Skunk Hunt (13 page)

Barbara squeezed against the arm of the
couch, staring at those hands, wondering where they might be
headed.

Flint's head, which had been sunk in a cloud,
suddenly rose. The weirdest sequence followed. His face brightened,
perhaps with the idea of the nip Jeremy had suggested. The dreamy
contemplativeness of a drunk smoothed his features, with a few
tokens of deep thought. Then awareness—and dread. He shook his
head. "Can't," he said.

"What?" Jeremy asked. "You can't have a
drink?"

"She'll get on my case."

"Who will?"

"Mom." Flint bobbed, his eyes rolled. "That
voice of hers. Can't take it."

We skunk kittens exchanged glances. I'd never
known Flint to have a mother, although I guess in the scheme of
things he must have had one. He was Oregon Hill born and bred, but
most of his life had passed before I was born—including, I
suspected, the passing of his mother. Not that I'd ever thought
about it before.

"Your mother moved back in with you?" Jeremy
asked, using a gentle inquiring tone that sounded surprisingly
genuine.

"Never moved out," Flint whispered, casting a
wary glance over his shoulder.

Hoo-boy. So Mama Flint lived in
his
head
? Well, maybe it
wasn't farfetched. Aside from the fact that old Flint was even more
seriously crocked than I imagined. And sicker still, that he had
been performing auditory sex while his interior mother enjoyed the
show. Shades of Psycho. I wondered if Mama Flint wasn't the only
one watching over and through his shoulder. Could be a whole
crowed. It might even be beneficial. Sort of an interior group
therapy. And who was to say
Skunk
wasn't living inside of
my
head? An entity so palpable it communicated via the U.S.
Postal Service?

"That's swell," Jeremy said, a little less
convincingly. "A guy should always be close to his mom..."

"Y'think?" Flint said doubtfully, picking at
his skin as though it bore an incriminating tattoo: MOM. Then his
eyes lifted at my brother with a look so sharp and cagey I was
sure, for a moment, that they shared a secret. But Jeremy broke
away, frowning at us with angry confusion. Barbara was so intent on
keeping her ears out of sight she didn't notice the exchange. I
couldn't draw conclusions from this dribble of evidence. Not yet,
at least.

"I don't know what you're going on for about
Mom," Flint said, turning stiffly. But there was nothing stiff
about the grin he shot Barbara. He looked like a boy wanting to
play tiddlywinks. Or maybe doctor. Make that an ear, nose and
throat doctor. "Why, Sweet Tooth, haven't you grown into a pretty
thing?"

Having her family nickname raised by the
neighborhood pervert was too much for my sister. With a squeak of
dismay she leapt up and ran to the easy chair she had first assumed
Flint would occupy.

I gave Jeremy a blank look. His
interpretation of my gutless neutrality was far more aggressive
than I had intended. He decided I was impatient to cut to the
chase—and so was he.

"Flint, Skunk told us you had something
tucked away in your old ammo locker. Something he had saved for us.
You must know what I'm talking about."

Flint withdrew his longing gaze from my
now-distant sister, his disfigured brow puckered in bemusement. "My
ammo locker? That's got nothing but old socks and stuff. What kind
of thing are you talking about?"

Jeremy was stumped, which presented a
problem, since Barbara and I had handed the initiative to him.

"Mute..." said Flint, shifting his bleary
eyes at me. "What do you have to say about this?"

I rolled sideways like a stunned rabbit. I
was surprised he remembered our childhood nicknames, especially
when he had usually improvised his own. He had occasionally
referred to me as 'Runt', and I vividly remember him once calling
Jeremy 'Laser Dick'—leaving the how and why of this unrepeated
moniker to my torrid imagination. He had to have learned the names
from Skunk, but that posed another conundrum. Our father had never
had much patience for Flint, and called him 'Lame Brain' to his
face. People with an overabundance of deficiencies don't take
kindly to those with a genuine excuse for their failures. And in
Skunk's eyes, Flint was a failure. No particular reason. The
veteran had not run for President or succeeded in business or
joined the Rotary Club or even spawned—the human ear not being the
seat of procreation. Skunk's own achievements could be elaborated
on the back of a postage stamp, but he had no excuse beyond being
dim and ornery. Why, even Bread and Butter, the omni-challenged kid
on China Street, had grown up to separate socks at the Salvation
Army. Flint hadn't done a thing after laying his sad ass out for
God and Country. He had not even...well, robbed a convenience
store.

To Skunk, Flint was a no good no-good. That
he would sit down with Lame Brain and regale him with tales of
family life over a cold cheap beer was almost as inconceivable as
leaving the Brink's stash in his care. And yet we knew he had spent
days on end on Flint's porch, drinking and talking and occasionally
looking convivial.

"You still don't have much to say, do you?"
Flint poked his upper denture back into place as he smiled at me. I
found myself thinking that my childhood portrait of an insect-like
Flint with antennae hadn't been far off the mark. Old age makes
aliens out of all of us. We morph into bizarre lifeforms, the
atmosphere becomes inadequate or poisonous.

"I guess I don't have much to say," I
said.

"Folks who don't have much to say and don't
say it are a rare breed," Flint nodded. "You don't have anything to
add to what your brother is telling me? I bet you didn't expect
largesse from ol' Skunk."

I knew what he meant. To my surprise, even
Jeremy comprehended him. Sadly, though, the first words out of
Barbara's mouth since entering confirmed our opinion of her
intellectual attainments.

"I don't think it's all that large," she
said.

"Microcosmic," said Flint, giving her a
benevolent and amatory gaze. "If he's left something here for you,
I haven't seen hide nor hair of it."

"I..." I said, then became tongue-tied. I
suddenly saw Flint in his Huey, apologizing to his co-pilot for
spilling his brains on his lap. Empathy? Sympathy? I wasn't sure I
knew the difference, but something gooey had splashed on my inner
narrative. But as soon as my heart went out to him, I gulped it
back down. We were up to no good, here, slobbering greedily after
stolen loot. Our primary concern had been to avoid arrest and
incarceration—in Jeremy's case, re-incarceration, aka recidivism.
But there were others who would be less delicate about our
well-being. A cop would shield the top of my head with his hand
while guiding me into a police cruiser. Someone more sinister would
rearrange our craniums. I might end up with kids drawing
antenna-topped heads on my worm-eaten clapboards.

Flint was still looking at me, his eyes
looking more buggy than ever.

"I don't know," I said finally. "Skunk didn't
have much to pass on."

"Just the Brinks money," said Flint.

Well yeah, almost everyone knew about
that. We had been hoping that bit of current events had slipped
past unnoticed by the old vet. Even at the time of the robbery the
Oregon Hill grapevine was in tatters, with only a few dozen of the
original inhabitants left to spread rumors and gossip. But it had
been a fairly major crime, a break from the usual headlines of
petty murder. Skunk became a celebrity. Mugshots of him and the
Congreve brothers were scattered thickly across the media. In the
old days, our neighbors would have considered him something of a
heroic
bandito
. And while
college students cast indifferent glances at our house when the
police wrapped it in yellow tape in a vain attempt to find batched
money or a sliver of evidence, a handful of diehards dropped by to
admire the home of the local hero. I don't recall Flint being among
them, but now I realized that, one way or another, he was bound to
have heard about the robbery. A tidbit that clung tenaciously to
the rattled filaments of his mind.

"I don't know where you folks got the idea
all those hundreds of thousands might be here," Flint said. "About
the only time Skunk visited was when he was broke and wanted hard
liquor."

Meaning every day. Flint continued:

"Mother didn't like him at all."

Jeremy was releasing little gasps of
disappointment, watching Flint closely for any micro-expressions
that would betray a lie.

"Yeah, well..." My brother turned his
analytical eye on me. Either I had misinterpreted the message, or I
knew exactly what it meant and had purposefully guided him and
Barbara to a dead end. Either way, I was going to get an
earful.

"Can we look in the ammo locker, anyway?" I
said with a squeamish insecurity that put me in the league of
worms. "The money's not there. You'd know if it was."

"So it
is
the money you're after," Flint said, his
expression steadily placid.

Jeremy gave me a 'good going, moron' look,
and left it at that. But Barbara thought my gaff so outstandingly
dumb that she stood, walked over, and punched me in the arm.

"Hey!" I protested.

"What a dummy!" she shouted, giving Flint a
good look at how important this was to us. Her bracelets jangled as
she gave me a second shot.

"Who's a dummy?" I winced. "You don't even
know what largesse—" I stopped when she balled her fist for another
attack. "All right! All right! But he would've guessed sooner or
later."

"That's right, Sweet Tooth," Flint nodded.
"Fact is, I knew what you were after soon as I opened the door. Why
else would you visit an old fart like me?"

My heart had gone out, it had been gulped,
and now it sank. It was possible, even likely, that Flint was being
crazy like a fox. He knew about the robbery. Maybe the money had
not been recovered because it was sitting in a box under his
floorboards. The same impulse that prompted me as a boy to tease
the damaged man had caused me, as an adult, to dismiss him as a
threat.

Flint leaned forward and studied the hallway.
"Doesn't look like Mother's up yet. Guess we can go ahead and take
a look." Planting his hands on his knees, he pushed himself up. We
followed him to a small alcove off the hallway. On the floor was an
old olive footlocker. Stenciled on top was:

CAPT.

A.F.

DEMENTIS

"Thirty-two by sixteen by thirteen," said
Flint. "Big enough to hold a quarter million or thereabouts. Guess
it depends on the specie."

Seeing Barbara about to speak, I distracted
her with a hard nudge. I figured I was doing her a favor. None of
us wanted to hear her ask, "What species?"

My multi-talented heart was thumping wildly.
I was sure I had nailed the message. Yet Flint gave no indication
that we were about to become rich.

As he opened the lid, a small chain
connecting the top to the interior rattled like a handful of
coins.

"That's it," the old man said. "Socks and
underdrawers."

That was what we saw lying on top, at least.
I was astonished by the neatness of the arrangement. I had never
heard of anyone folding underwear and socks. Who cares if boxer
shorts are wrinkled? These were things you tossed in a heap and
washed at your own risk. We caught a whiff of fabric softener rise
from the chest. Slightly effeminate, but undeniably clean.

"Mother's a stickler for soap and bleach,"
Flint informed us, as though reading our thoughts.

Boy, a ghost laundress. Couldn't we all use
one?

"You mind if we...?" Jeremy began reaching
down.

"Mother'll skin me alive if you make a mess,"
Flint warned.

"Oh." Jeremy stood up. I sensed his aching
desire to dump everything in the locker onto the floor. Jail must
have taught him respect for the elderly, or disabled veterans, or
both. With the old Jeremy, we would have already known what was at
the bottom of the chest.

"May I...?" Barbara softened the old man with
a leach-like moue that sucked out the old man's blood from a foot
away. I winced at the way he wilted and made way for her. Of
course, she was my sister. I knew what a cretin she was. But he
should have known better.

As she leaned down, I realized she had placed
herself perfectly for Flint's chosen perversion. Would serve her
right if he whipped it out and jacked off in her ear canal. I could
almost hear her squealing for a Q-tip.

Barbara slid off her bracelets and held them
in her left hand as she deftly slid her right into the well-folded
cotton. She shifted right, then left, making small smooching noises
whenever her fingers encountered the wall of the chest. She
suddenly stopped and frowned.

"What's..."

"Oh, nothing, my dear," Flint said with
cautionary benevolence. "A Smith & Wesson 39. Bought it off a
Navy Seal. I stick the barrel in my mouth every April 1."

Barbara craned her head up in at him. He wore
a smooth stare, a dreamy reconciliation.

"That's the anniversary of my wounding," he
continued. "I like to remind myself how close I came to our
Savior."

"What if it goes off?" Jeremy asked.

"Most people have more than one anniversary."
Flint raised a finger. "Don't pull at it, Sweet Tooth. I'd hate
there to be an accident."

"Uh..." I began, but was slapped down by a
harsh look from Jeremy. Today was April 1.

Withdrawing her hand gingerly from the
underwear, Barbara began to pull back.

"Can we look in there?" Jeremy was pointing
at the partitioned compartment on one side of the chest. The top
tray was segmented to hold toothbrushes, combs and whatever other
items Flint needed for personal hygiene—only now they held sewing
needles and military patches. It was as though he was storing up
for the day he went back into action, complete with rank and
sidearm.