Skunk Hunt (16 page)

"That's the Bible," said Jeremy, slapping
himself in lieu of his sister. "You mean 'Once upon a time.'"

"When did Skunk tell you fairytales?" I
inquired with a squirt of post-mortem sibling jealousy.

"All the time. Like when he told us about his
first robbery, or about that Crazy Charlie guy he shared a cell
with." She flashed a fake eyelash at me in the rearview mirror.
"You know, the guy who tried to stick his thing in the light
socket."

"You call those fairytales?" I asked.

"Just because they're true doesn't mean they
aren't fairytales," Barbara reasoned.

I instantly conceded. "It's like Doubletalk
owning a Porsche. He obviously has one, but it seems like a
fairytale." I stabbed the back of my brother's head with a visual
dagger. There was no blood. A fairytale. I tried to make myself
comfortable in the Sentra's back seat.

"How can you afford a Porsche?" Barbara
asked. Even she could see this was one cultural icon that was out
of place.

"That must cost over fifty grand," I
added.

"Try ten more," said Jeremy, not quite
boastfully, but close enough to annoy. "Alcantara seats, Bluetooth
connectivity, dual-clutch transmission—Number 2 luxury car in
America."

"Well yeah," Barbara said peevishly as she
stopped at the Broad and Belvedere traffic light. This was going to
be a long ride.

When Jeremy glanced at her, I glimpsed a
profile as good as a map. Years ago, I had noticed how my brother's
nose flexed whenever he was cooking up a lie, like a chef sniffing
at his stew. The dorsum of his nose sank, then bulged out, a rare
feat. He was brewing a particularly rancid pot.

"American Express Gold had a lottery," Jeremy
said. "I won."

"How did you get an Amex Gold?" I asked.

"I have good credit," he answered.

"How did you get a good rating?" I
persisted.

"I've been a good boy," he snapped, twisting
around in his seat and giving me the Skunk glare. "What happened to
'mute'?"

"When I see someone digging his self into a
hole, I wonder why," I said.

"I paid cash for mine," said Barbara
smugly.

"Well, you didn't have to slide up and down
many poles for this heap," said Jeremy unkindly.

Barbara swore and turned abruptly into a
Lowe's parking lot, stopping in front of the nursery and turning on
Jeremy. "You want to reverse that remark, or you want to get out
here and now?"

"You have to admit, the only cars worth
having are the ones you take out a loan for." Jeremy wore a
stubborn expression.

Barbara's was more stubborn. For an instant,
her face looked like a club. "I mean that 'pole' remark. I'd like
to see you try to dance one of them. Wouldn't you look like
a...a..."

"Like an idiot," I said. Not very inventive,
but my sister needed assistance and I had been taken by
surprise.

"Yeah," said Barbara. "I found
something I do good and you trash it. And what, by the way,
do
you
do good besides buying
cars you can't afford and getting credit you don't deserve and
being a complete asshole about it?"

"Now you're trashing what
I
do well—" Jeremy began.

"And if you think I missed that other
thing you were suggesting, think again. I
earned
this car with honest living."

Sure, and she flossed her teeth after every
meal. But I wasn't about to side with Jeremy, who after all had
left me with crippling psychic wounds. Of course, that was a right
usually reserved for the eldest brother, but I still wasn't
convinced he was older than me.

"So you want to hit the sidewalk?" Barbara
continued. "Or are you going to apologize like a civilized human
being and we get on with it?"

Again, Jeremy tricked me. Bowing his head to
the dash, he moaned, "All right, forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive
me!"

"That's not civilized," Barbara judged.

"Well, it isn't Cro-Magnon, either."

"No," said Barbara. "It wasn't crow."

"Okay." Jeremy sat up. "I'm sorry, Sweet
Tooth. Sliding up and down poles is a good living. A great living.
I know I couldn't make tips doing it. Can you find it in your heart
to forgive me?"

I wanted to beat my head in, but Barbara
swallowed it whole.

"Let's get this show on the road," she said,
shifting into gear.

By all rights Jeremy's comment should have
landed him on the sidewalk. So many crossed expectations sent my
head spinning. And we were only just beginning.

We emerged from the inner ring of old
commercial crud on Broad Street and entered the younger crud of
Willow Lawn. Ten miles later we approached the new crud, huge
warehouse outlets and a spanking new mall where geese ignorant of
recent changes in the terrain led their goslings out of the local
ponds for a stroll and squash. I hate birds a lot less than I hate
people, and I hated to see the feathered puddles in the vast
parking lot where we turned off to orientate ourselves.

"So what intersection are we looking for?"
Barbara asked.

"What makes you think we're looking for an
intersection?" Jeremy said.

"You said 'the first cross', meaning first
crossing, right?"

"Yeah..." Jeremy turned halfway in the seat
and looked at me. "Got an opinion?"

"No," I said. I never did. A handful of
half-assed conclusions was about all I could manage.

"Do you think it means the first crossroad?"
Jeremy scrutinized me for signs of life.

"You'd think," I said. Then, feeling the
weight of his disdain, I ventured, "Or it could be a trick, to
throw someone off."

"Like us," Jeremy sniffed.

"Maybe a church?" I continued.

"That's an idea," said Barbara.

It certainly was. It was also wasted
air. The instructions were so vague that they did not even include
the first cross
after what
.
Short Pump was no longer the one-horse town it had been when I was
a child, where Broad Street petered out into cow pastures. Man's
immortal longing for shopping malls was fulfilled to the max: open
malls, enclosed malls, strip malls, regional malls, super regional
malls, outlet malls...all surrounded by fake townhouses that
disguised parking lots and real condos that contained fake humans.
For someone from the earthy misery of Oregon Hill it was a bit like
Hell, where human dysfunctions were compartmentalized and
fermented. I got the feeling that commercial America had bitten off
more than it could chew, as evidenced by all the empty shops
festooned with For Lease banners. Listen folks, all we need is a
Mom and Pop and a roof over our heads. Just try to find a proper
éclair at Orvis or orange pop at Nordstrom.

I doubted Jeremy or Barbara shared my sense
of esthetics. To them, the junk of the Hill was just a smaller
version of the junk malls. They didn't see that the crap of our old
neighborhood was fully integrated with the residents, whereas Short
Pump was an alien ship that had crash landed and just sat, untowed,
out of place and out of tune. Barbara's eyes wandered over the
marquees. She would return to pick out a little bit of overpriced
Heaven to take back home.

"Knock-knock," Jeremy said, rapping me on the
head. "Anyone there?"

I jerked back. "Why—"

"I said we should just get back on 250 and
head west. Maybe we can't recognize the clue until we see it."

"Sure," I said, rubbing my head. Jeremy's
knuckles hadn't changed. If anything, they'd grown harder. Or my
skull had grown soft.

There were plenty of intersections in the
first mile. It was hard to say where Short Pump ended and the rest
of the world began. We passed Strange's Nursery without seeing
anything that fit the puzzle. I saw a man carting something that
looked like an overgrown weed to the back of his pickup. It could
have been something else, a shrub out of season or something. Or
maybe weeds were in fashion.

"Skunk hunt," I said.

"Huh?" my brother and sister asked in
unison.

"This whole thing stinks," I elaborated.

"I thought you might have an opinion," said
Jeremy without turning around.

We entered a stretch that was semi-suburban,
semi-country, semi-scenic, semi-desolate and completely tedious. We
stopped at a couple of churches, didn't see God or anything else
interesting, and moved on. Our interest was piqued by a cemetery
and we tooled around the graves for about fifteen minutes. The
tombstones were lawnmower-friendly, flat on the ground. There
wasn't a standing cross to be seen. Costco graves.

We were ten or fifteen miles from the Town
Center when Jeremy gave an un-Skunk-like yelp.

"Turn around!"

"What did you see?" I asked.

"Turn
where
?" Barbara said frantically.

It's amazing how problematic turning a car
around can become in the countryside. All the wide open spaces were
blocked off by ditches and fences, and there was just enough
traffic coming the other way to discourage Barbara from attempting
a U-turn.

"There's a driveway!" Jeremy shouted.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Barbara
complained as we flew past.

"You didn't see it?"

"There was a dirt lane—"

"That was the driveway!" Jeremy thumped the
dash with his fist.

"Don't hit my car!" Barbara warned. "And a
dirt lane isn't a driveway."

"Out here it is." Jeremy peered ahead.
"There's a cut by the road. See it? Right there?"

Barbara slowed down for a moment, then sped
up. "It's too close to the ditch."

"You've got to be..."

My limited view from the back prevented me
from joining the debate. I wanted to tell Jeremy to shut up and let
Barbara choose where to turn. Captain of the ship and all. Even if
my brother was right, Barbara was too nervous for precision. It
would do none of us any good if she got stuck.

Finally, only a mile and a half down the
road, we came to a Fast Mart and Barbara pulled off. She drove up
to a gas pump.

"What are you doing?" Jeremy screeched,
becoming less and less like Skunk by the second.

"My tank's empty," Barbara answered with a
smile of satisfaction. "Bet you didn't notice that, did you, Mr.
Smarty Pants?" She held out her hand. "Give me twenty."

Jeremy crossed his palm over hers in empty
salute. "There's five."

"I've got a few dollars," I said, willing to
suffer financially for the greater good.

"If Doubletalk can afford a sports car, he
can fork over twenty," Barbara said, suddenly chock-full of
authority.

Jeremy saw determined patience in her eyes
and shrugged. "I'll use my card." He got out, a huff of disgust
springing out of him as he stood.

"Goddamn," I murmured as he swiped his card
at the pump.

"What?" said Barbara cheerfully, basking in
one-upsmanship.

"A Gold Card," I said. "Jeremy has a Gold
Card."

"Big deal," Barbara said, unwilling to
grant him any credit for credit. "I know someone with a
Platinum
."

"Who's that?" I asked.

"Some guy."

"Your sugar daddy?" Brothers can say such
things.

"Go to hell," was her bland response. "Most
everything I own is in my name."

I decided it was beyond my sibling
entitlements to ask what she owned that
wasn't
in her name. Only her car and her lease
would have dotted lines, in any case. One or both must belong to
someone else. If it came to a split with her benefactor, she could
at least keep the jeans and mascara and (presumably) kinky
underwear.

The gas pump nozzle rattled in the tank.
Barbara let go with an oath and stuck her head out her window.
"Don't be so cheap. Fill it up!"

Jeremy said something to the effect that that
was probably the line she used on her johns, and for an instant I
thought Barbara was going to start the engine and leave him behind.
Jeremy must have thought so, too, because he reinserted the nozzle
and let the gas run until the cut-off trigger clicked.

"See the sign?" he said when Barbara
protested, directing her attention to the 'Please Do Not Cap Off'
sticker on the side of the pump.

All of this put a dazzling shine on our mood
as we backtracked Route 250. None of us said a word until Jeremy
pointed: "There."

Leaning up in my seat, I could see the cross
at the side of the road, one of those plain white memorials
families and loved ones plant for traffic victims. Luckily, there
was a gravel turnaround close by that suited Barbara. She parked
without qualm or complaint and we got out and crossed the road.
Within twenty feet of the cross it became apparent we were in the
right place: 'Andrew McPherson' was stenciled in neat black letters
on the transverse. Drawing closer, we saw an ichthus beneath the
name. Inside the fish was a tiny outline of a skunk.

"I can't imagine Dad ever being called
'Andy'," said Barbara.

It did sound too commonplace for a man of
Skunk's extravagant character. We stared down at the cross with a
solemnity that would have been more appropriate to a real grave. I
suppose the possibility that it held a vital clue added to its
religious significance.

"What's with the car hood ornament?" said
Barbara, referring to the ichthus.

Jeremy walked around the cross like a boxer
checking out an opponent. "So?" he said, and answered himself: "So
nothing."

"You don't suppose it could be buried..."
Barbara began.

"What, right here?" Jeremy stopped and looked
down. "Like X marks the spot?"

I surveyed the area for mounds and raw earth.
"It doesn't look like anyone has been digging here."