Stories (2011) (113 page)

"Yes, master."

"Remember the bulge those glasses made beneath the
wrappings? And if I hadn’t looked in on the American, I might not have seen him
or the ring you forgot. Had I not caught him in time it might have led to the
police. Robbing graves is a nice neat method of supply, but making our own
corpses first could get us in trouble, Kuda. You understand?"

"Yes, Master. Forgive me, Master. I understand."

The little man shook his head. "The help these
days." He turned and shuffled back to the front of the shop. A man was
coming soon to buy a mummy.

It had been a very bad night. The rain was blasting away and
the wipers and lights were hardly worth the trouble. It had been a sudden rain,
and I had failed to check the weather report. That had been stupid of me. It
should have been a priority.

I was considering this bit of stupidity when I noticed the
man.

He was little more than a blur in the night. He stood beside
the road with his thumb extended, a sloppy leather hat washed down over his
face. For some reason I had a gut urge against it, but I had picked up
hitchhikers in the past, and was not overly sensitive to the fears generally
associated with them. Not me.

I pulled over just past him and braked. He would have a
distance to run because I had hesitated a bit before stopping. I didn’t back up
to make it easier for him. I sat and half reconsidered. There was something about
this guy that bothered me. Perhaps it was just the surprise of seeing him out
in this kind of rain, but then again it had been sudden. It had taken me by
surprise, why not him. Nothing mysterious in that.

I put my arm over the backseat and looked through the rear
glass. In the fuzzy, pink glow of the brakelights I could see that he was a
huge man, made to look all the larger by the blurring effect of rain and light.
Rain and light or not, he was larger than I was. If he meant harm...

I had considered too long. The deed was done. In one smooth
motion the door was open and he was sliding wetly against the seat on the
passenger’s side. Cold wind and rain blew in with him.

The overhead light, the brief instant that it glowed while
the door was open, showed him to have a leathery, Indian-type face. Hawk nose,
high cheek bones, a full but hard mouth. His age could have been thirty or
fifty. He had that kind of face. The coat he wore was thick and ankle length,
the wet blanket odor of it carried in with him. His leather hat drooped and
dripped water.

Something about him made my skin crawl.

He shut the door. A car went by, tires whining, cast its
lights across my Plymouth, winked on and away. The man said, "Thank
you."

Simple enough, but I almost went through the roof of the
Plymouth. The words were kind, but that voice...

I managed to reply kindly enough—some nonsense about where
are you going, the usual chatter, and his answers were civil... but that voice.

Another car went by with its tires singing and threw water
against my door with a sound like scuttling claws. I checked the rearview and
pulled back onto the highway.

The man sat silent, hands in his pockets... perhaps he was
plotting... waiting for the right moment.

Hell, I told myself, and gave that part of my brain that
frightens so easily a few mental lashes. Look straight ahead and drive
carefully, I thought. Don’t be silly.

But my gaze wandered often to the stranger, and on one of my
peripheral glances I saw that he was
staring
at me.

Just sitting there like a big wooden doll with its head
cranked my way. His hands were still buried deep in his pockets. I wondered
what those pockets contained. A razor? A knife? A gun?

With as much calm as I could muster, I took my right hand
from the wheel and rolled my fingers together in a manner that suggested that I
was trying to shake cold or numbness from them. That didn’t keep my hand from
trembling as I casually dipped it into my GI jacket, traced my fingers over the
fine, bone handle of the razor I kept there.

Now! I told myself.

With one swift motion I brought the razor out, flicked it
open as I leaned away from the wheel towards him. Its expertly honed edge
caught his throat and passed through, deep. The man fell back against the door.

I closed up the razor and put it away, pulled the car over
to the side of the road, got out and rushed around to the passenger’s side. I
jerked the door open and drug him out on the roadside. His throat was a scarf
of blood now.

I used his hat to clean a few drops of blood off the seat,
then checked his pockets. No weapons. Christ! I was getting jumpy as of late.
This damn weather.

I got his wallet out and picked the two dollars out of it
and slung the wallet as far away into the blackness as I could. I got my camera
out of the backseat floorboard and took a few flash shots of him for my
collection and put it away. They probably wouldn’t be among my best pictures. I
put the camera away and went around to climb in behind the wheel.

Laughing at myself, I started up the Plymouth. He hadn’t
been a bit different than the others. A piece of cake. "To hell with your
imagination," I said aloud and drove away from there trying to shake the
chill of the rain.

Hi there. Catching much?

Well, they're in there. Just got to have the right bait and
be patient. You don't mind if I sit down on the bank next to you, do you?

Good, good. Thanks.

Yeah, I like it fine. I never fish with anything but a cane
pole. An old-fashioned way of doing things, I guess, but it suits me. I like to
sharpen one end a bit, stick that baby in the ground, and wait it out. Maybe
find someone like yourself to chat with for a while.

Whee, it's hot. Near sundown, too. You know, every time I'm
out fishing in heat like this, I think of Old Charlie.

Huh? No, no. You couldn't really say he was a friend of
mine. You see, I met him right on this bank, sort of like I'm meeting you, only
he came down and sat beside me.

It was hot, just like today. So damned hot you'd think your
nose was going to melt off your face and run down your chin. I was out here
trying to catch a bite before sundown, because there's not much I like better
than fish, when here comes this old codger with a fishing rig. It was just like
he stepped out of nowhere.

Don't let my saying he was old get you to thinking about
white hair and withered muscles. This old boy was stout-looking, like maybe
he'd done hard labor all his life. Looked, and was built, a whole lot like me,
as a matter of fact. He comes and sits down about where I am now and smiles at
me. That was the first time I'd ever seen that kind of smile, sort of strange
and satisfied. And it looked wavery, as if it was nothing more than a
reflection in the water. After he got settled, got his gear all worked out, and
put his bait on, he cast his line and looked at me with that smile again.
"Catching much?" he asked me.

"No," I say, "Nothing. Haven't had a bite all
day."

He smiled that smile. "My name's Charlie. Some folks
just call me Old Charlie."

"Ned," I say

"I sure do love to fish," he says. "I drive
out every afternoon, up and down this Sabine River bank, shopping for a fresh
place to fish."

"You don't say," I says to him. "Well, ain't
much here."

About that time, Old Charlie gets him a bite and pulls in a
nice-size bass. He puts it on a chain and stakes it out in the water.

Then Old Charlie rebaits his hook and tosses it again. A
bass twice the size of the first hits it immediately and he adds it to his
chain.

Wasn't five minutes later and he'd nabbed another.

Me, I hadn't caught doodlysquat. So I sort of forgot about
the old boy and his odd smile and got to watching him haul them in. I bet he
had nine fish on that chain when I finally said, "That rod and reel must
be the way to go."

He looked at me and smiled again. "No, don't matter
what you fish with, it's the bait that does it. Got the right bait, you can
catch anything."

"What do you use?"

"I've tried many baits," he said smiling,
"but there isn't a one that beats this one. Came by using it in an odd
way, too. My wife gave me the idea. Course, that was a few years back. Not
married now. You see, my wife was a young thing, about thirty-two years younger
than me, and I married her when she was just a kid. Otherwise, she wouldn't
have been fool enough to marry an old man like me. I knew I was robbing the
cradle, impressing her with my worldly knowledge so I could have someone at
home all the time, but I couldn't help myself.

"Her parents didn't mind much. They were river trash
and were ready to get shed of her anyway. Just one more mouth to feed far as
they were concerned. I guess that made it all the easier for me.

"Anyway, we got married. Things went right smart for
the first few years. Then one day this Bible-thumper came by. He was something
of a preacher and a Bible salesman, and I let him in to talk to us. Well, he
talked a right nice sermon, and Amy, my wife, insisted that we invite him to
dinner and buy one of his Bibles.

"I noticed right then and there that she and that
Bible-thumper were exchanging looks, and not the sort to make you think of
church and gospel reading.

"I was burned by it, but I'm a realistic old cuss, and
I knew I was pretty old for Amy and that there wasn't any harm in her looking.
Long as that was all she did. Guess by that time, she'd found out I wasn't
nearly as worldly as she had thought. All I had to offer her was a hardscrabble
farm and what I could catch off the river, and neither was exactly first-rate.
Could hardly grow a cotton-pickin' thing on that place, the soil was so worked
out, and I didn't have money for no store-bought fertilizer-and didn't have no
animals to speak of that could supply me with any barnyard stuff, neither.
Fishing had got plumb rotten. This was before the bait.

"Well, me not being about to catch much fish was
hurtin' me the most. I didn't care much for plowing them old hot fields. Never
had. But fishing... now that was my pride and joy.

That and Amy.

"So, we're scraping by like usual, and I start to
notice this change in Amy. It started taking place the day after that
Bible-thumper's visit. She still fixed meals, ironed and stuff, but she spent a
lot of time looking out the windows, like she was expecting something. Half the
time when I spoke to her, she didn't even hear me.

"And damned if that thumper didn't show up about a week
later. We'd already bought a Bible, and since he didn't have no new product to
sell us, he just preached at us. Told us about the ten commandments and about
hellfire and damnation. But from the way he was looking at Amy, I figured there
was at least one or two of them commandments he didn't take too serious, and I
don't think he gave a hang about hellfire and damnation.

"I kept my temper, them being young and all. I figured
the thumper would give it up pretty soon anyway, and when he was gone Amy would
forget.

"But he didn't give it up. Got so he came around often,
his suit all brushed up, his hair slicked back, and that Bible under his arm
like it was some kind of key to any man's home. He even took to coming early in
the day while I was working the fields, or in the barn sharpening my tools.

"He and Amy would sit on the front porch, and every
once in a while I'd look up from my old mules and quit plowing and see them
sitting there in the rocking chairs on the porch. Him with that Bible on his
knee-closed-and her looking at him like he was the very one that hung the moon.

"They'd be there when I quit the fields and went down
to the river in the cool of the afternoon, and though I didn't like the idea of
them being alone like that, it never really occurred to me that anything would
come of it-I mean, not really.

"Old men can be such fools.

"Well, I remember thinking that it had gone far enough.
Even if they were young and all, I just couldn't go on with that open flirting
right in front of my eyes. I figured they must have thought me pretty stupid,
and maybe that bothered me even more.

"Anyway, I went down to the river that afternoon. Told
myself that when I got back I'd have me a talk with Amy, or if that
Bible-thumper was still there amoonin' on the porch, I'd pull him aside and
tell him politely that if he came back again I was going to blow his head off.

"This day I'm down at the river there's not a thing
biting. Not only do we need the food, but my pride is involved here. I'd been a
fisherman all of my life, and it was getting so I couldn't seine a minnow out
of a washtub. I just couldn't have imagined at that time how fine that bait was
going to work... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Disgusted, I decided to come back from the creek
early, and what do I see but this Bible fella's car still parked in our yard,
and it getting along toward sundown, too. I'll tell you, I hadn't caught a
thing and I wasn't in any kind of friendly mood, and it just went all over me
like a bad dose of wood ticks. When I got to the front porch I was even madder,
because the rockers were empty. The Bible that thumper always toted was lying
on the seat of one of them, but they weren't anywhere to be seen.

"Guess I was thinking it right then, but I was hoping
that I wasn't going to find what I thought I was going to find. Wanted to think
they had just went in to have a drink of water or a bite to eat, but my mind
wouldn't rightly settle on that.

"Creeping, almost, I walked up on the porch and slipped
inside. The noises I heard from the bedroom didn't sound anything like
water-drinking, eating, or gospel-talking.