The Pines (5 page)

Splashing back to the bank, he climbed out, dripping, stuffed the loot in his jacket and picked up his pants. Then he stopped, thoughtful. It was wrong to just leave the body there. He took the pocketknife out of his pants and with long strides sloshed back into the creek.

He flipped the corpse onto its back and launched it into the center of the stream. Flies kept trying to settle. Snicking open the jackknife, he waded after it.

The blade was thick with rust.

Slowly, the woods took on color, pinkish light blazing first at the tips of the pines, then shimmering along the trunks.

He plunged the blade deep into the distended stomach, and the corpse splashed under. It bobbed, and a stiffened arm struck his thigh. Foul gases escaped as he stuck the knife in again, neatly slitting the belly. The gash burbled, and he gagged on the stench. Immediately, the body began to sink, trailing fat bubbles, fluid spreading like smoke through the brown water.

He waded back to the shallows and clawed up a slime-haired rock, breaking a thumbnail in the process. “Shit.” Grunting with the weight, he returned to where the body hung just below the surface. It drifted slightly, eyes trailing. He positioned the rock and dropped it on the chest.

The birds were beginning to make a racket as he clambered back onto the bank and shook himself like a dog. Dressing, he smiled the mild smile of a man who has completed some trivial yet satisfying task. Finally, he put the jacket back on and patted the pocket, feeling the damply wadded money.

Already, the sky was so bright it hurt his eyes. Hiking back toward camp, he sucked on his broken nail, tasting blood and foulness.

With the morning sun slanting across the corrugated roof, the heat in the ambulance hall soon reached oven proportions, even with the garage door up. A few feet beyond the blindly staring ambulance, Doris sat at a card table with Larry Jenkins, a trainee.

“This one’s from a call we had a couple weeks back.” Doris raised her voice to be heard above an old window fan that stood on the cement floor. “We picked up this guy down at that new construction site. You know the one? That development out by Batsto?” Steam swirled from a Styrofoam cup and mingled with the smoke from her cigarette.

Yawning, Larry reached for the report. “Bad?”

She checked the card. “Just a metal sliver in his hand. Lots of blood though. You should have heard him yelling. We took it out for him, bandaged him up, took him over to the clinic at Mount Misery for stitches.”

Considering what to show him next, she flipped through reports, found the one about the man who’d fallen on the chainsaw—over a week old now.

“Is this everybody?” Sounding disappointed, Larry glanced down the list of volunteers.

“And, oh yeah, whenever you pick anybody up from the construction site, you got to make sure somebody there follows you to bring the guy back.”

“I thought you had more women working this thing.”

Walking through the hatch, Jack Buzby sauntered over to the table. It had been his idea to get his buddy Larry involved. They did everything together, almost. Both were volunteer forest-fire wardens, and both worked for a roofing company owned by Larry’s uncle. “How’s little Larry doin’, teach?”

“Man, would you quit it with that ‘little’ crap?” All five foot six, one hundred and fifteen pounds of him bridled. When angry, his nineteen-year-old face vividly displayed the thick cloud of freckles that covered it.

“He’s doing all right, I guess. Let’s see now. You know calls are in clear speech, right?” She shuffled through blank forms and looked up at Jack. “Christ, it’s hot. Who am I running with today anyhow?”

“Athena and Siggy.”

“Sig?” She groaned. “Oh shit, the fate worse than sex. It’s not bad enough they bleed all over me, I have to be in a close space with that smell? What’s the matter, don’t I live right?” As Jack walked away chuckling, she called after him. “Forget I said any of that.”

“Said what?” He got a Coke out of the refrigerator and strolled back outside to the hot blue morning.

Larry picked up an accident card, and Doris glanced at it. “Athena filled that one out.” She took it from him, holding it gingerly between fingers brown with nicotine.

Watching her read it over, he felt she expected him to say something. “Uh, I hear she’s real good.”

“Clear head that woman’s got. Not like some.”

“She really black?”

She raked him with a look.

“I only ask because she sure don’t, uh, look like no…I mean, do they, uh, have a lot of accidents out at that site?”

Her gaze relaxed. “Almost every day, seems like, and they always call us. One of the foremen is a buddy of mine.” She crushed out her cigarette. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know why they haven’t had a fatality out there yet. They’re all a bunch of alcoholics anyway.” Leaning closer, she added, “They’re claiming there’s been a lot of sabotage by locals. Ropes cut halfway through, that sort of thing. Pineys jealous over the jobs, I guess.”

Larry nodded, thinking she had a real nice build for an old broad. He breathed in her perfume. Strong and pungent. And oddly familiar. Old Spice? He fanned himself with an accident report.

Outside, Jack shaded his eyes and swigged Coke from the can as a car pulled up. The Plymouth looked cancerous with rust, midnight blue paint flaking off the sides.

“Athena, when you gonna clean out this car?”

Surprised, she peered up through the smeary windshield. “What?” She’d been rifling the glove compartment for a candy bar, her breakfast, only to find a runny lump. “Damn.” The vinyl seat next to her was heaped with what looked like a year’s worth of junk mail and outdated ambulance paperwork. “Why?” Crumpled paper cups and hamburger wrappings covered the backseat. “You want to do it for me?”

“I’ll betchya I could do it for ya, ’Thena.” He gave her his best sexy smile. “Given half a chance.” Behind the thick lenses of his glasses, his eyes were pale blurs. Staring, he tried to figure out what it was about this woman that excited him. He supposed she was attractive enough in her own way, though not especially pretty, not with her hair pulled back that way and the shirt buttoned all the way up. Then there was the leg, too. Maybe it was just this feeling that she’d be so grateful if a guy could only get her to loosen up a little. Flashing his teeth at her again, he leaned against the car and wondered whether she wore the same blue work shirt every day or if she had a ware house full of them at home.

She smiled thinly and shoved the door open, almost knocking him over. “You didn’t pull duty today, did you?”

“Nope, I came over with Larry—he’s inside with Doris.” Sweat soaked the front of his T-shirt, and he gulped more soda. “So how’s things in ’Ro’s Furnace?” He took his glasses off, wiped perspiration out of his eyes with a muscular forearm.

“How should I know?” Marching around the side of the car, she checked a tire that was low on air. “So it’s me, Doris and a trainee?”

“Nope,” he answered, grinning. “Sig the Stink’s running with you.” The face she made almost choked him. “Better not let Doris see you making fun a him.”

Larry looked up from what Doris was showing him. “Athena’s here. Hey, I been meaning to ask you, how come she limps like that?”

“When she was a little girl, they told her she’d never walk again.” The words came out rapidly. “Obviously, they didn’t know her very well.” Without glancing at him, she lit another cigarette. “Poor kid had a rough time. No parents. Then the grandmother died.” She exhaled heavily, then cleared her throat. “Most of the calls in these parts are from the highways. Like I told you, we don’t do those except in special cases, like if there’s a big pileup, and the hospital ambulances can’t handle it all. I’ll tell you frankly, since you’re going to be working with us, we have an agreement with certain friends of mine. The state won’t go out of its way to inspect our operation so long as we keep to the pines. People have a real funny attitude towards us. Nobody gives much of a shit what goes on out here. They just want to stick us with all the prisons and loony bins and forget about them. Before we started, a lot of pineys never even got to a hospital. Now, of course, the hospitals don’t even want them half the time.” She sighed. “We’re underequipped. So you’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got. We’ll take anything you can beg, borrow and/or steal from the area clinics. They don’t like us much.” Suddenly, she smiled. “Hiya, honey. How are you this morning?” Athena picked up the duty roster. “Who’s driving today?” “Sig’s not here yet. If anything comes in, you take it out.” Athena nodded. “So what do you think, Larry? Are you going to be running with us from now on?” He grinned at her. “I hope so.”

Jack stepped forward, a keen competitive gleam in his eyes.

“…even studied the manual already,” Doris was saying. “We’ll just have to see how he makes out when—”

Jack horned in. “These cards are a gas, ain’t they? Pineys have the weirdest damn accidents. ’Thena, you remember that time when—?”

Larry interrupted, “Man, since when ain’t you a piney?”

“Since he took a bath,” supplied Doris, “and started wearing tight jeans.”

“Is there any more coffee?”

“Athena, you’re not really gonna drink Doris’s coffee, are you?” Very casually, Jack pressed up close to her. “Look at this stuff—it’s like motor oil.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t drink it. Look out.” She poured a cup of scalding liquid. “I fill one of the syringes and mainline it.”

“Jack, this is your captain speaking. You want to give Sig a call and see whether he’s planning on joining us sometime today?”

The phone rang, and Doris shouted. Moving with surprising speed, Athena leaped into the rig. She started the engine and swung the ambulance out of the bay. Doors banged open, Jack hanging on. He hopped off, tugging the bay door down behind them.

Doris jumped in next to Athena. “You want to come, Jack? We’re still a man short. Get that side door shut. Make sure it’s locked. Come on, Larry! Get your skinny ass in here!”

Heart pounding, Larry clambered through the hatch.

Wes Shourds looked up from the dead animals. He wore his sand-colored hair pasted down flat, which enhanced the vaguely frog-gish look of his broad face and bulging eyes. Just below his left eye, he bore a large inflamed birthmark, and something was wrong with his mouth, a sort of crimping to the upper lip. Though still young, he was already going to beery fat. “Find anything?”

“Nope,” muttered Al.

“Sure gone a long time.”

“Yeah?” Al picked at his long, dirty fingernails. “So? Didn’t find nuthin’ ’cept some funny sorta tracks.”

Wes knew the tone of voice well enough not to push it. Spencer was a good man to go off deer-jacking with, but you had to be careful with him—he got nuts sometimes. Especially when he had the shakes. Wes swatted away a blackfly that was trying to bite his lip. “Coffee’s ’bout ready.”

Al’s habitual look of hostility lessened somewhat, and he sat on the log. “I got sumthin’ here lots better’n coffee fer takin’ the chill off.” Rummaging through the gear in the bag, he produced a large-mouthed jar of pale fluid and took a deep slug. Golden liquid dribbled down his stubbled chin. As he wiped the hairy back of one hand across his mouth, he silently passed the jar to Wes.

Wes figured Al probably wasn’t kidding about being cold—he never took that damn hunting jacket off. Made a man sweat just to look at him. He gulped the burning fluid, wondering if Al slept in that jacket, if he screwed in it. “Shit,” he said, eyes watering. “This ain’t from the same batch as t’other stuff, is it?” He glanced at the shards of broken glass that littered the clearing.

“Fuck you! What’s the matter with it, asshole?” Al snatched the jar back. Some of it spilled, and he started cursing good, then. Wes flinched.

Strange, but he never liked to hear Al cuss. Something about the way Al said certain words made his flesh creep, sort of. “Damn shame about that blast catchin’ this one in the gut.”

In response, Spencer only muttered blackly and knuckled at his runny nose.

Wes looked him over cautiously, noting the huge pores of Al’s face, his rotting teeth, even the straggly sideburns: he had to be about the ugliest man he’d ever seen. Al still fumed over the whiskey, and Wes continued his efforts to change the subject. “Sure ruined a lotta good meat.” Beside him, a buck and a doe stained the sand and lichen. Flies swarmed.

The night’s hunting had been easy—a lucky thing, Wes considered, since they’d been so drunk—a simple matter of freezing the small herd with powerful flashlights, then blasting away. Because they could get into big trouble if caught out here with rifles, they always used shotguns, the buckshot strung together with wire so it wouldn’t scatter. But sometimes the wire came apart. Last night, a peripheral blast had torn open the neck of a second doe, and though spouting blood, she’d managed to bound away. Following by flashlight, they’d lost the blood trail near the creek. Al went looking this morning but…

Wes’s eyes narrowed. That’s why Al had been gone so long—he’d found the doe and hidden her, meaning to come back and get her for himself later. Come to think of it, the bastard was looking pretty pleased with himself.

“You know, Al, we still gotta haul them kills back to the truck.” Disgusted, Wes knew better than to say anything about the second doe. “Your son shoulda come. Coulda used the extra man.” They’d hidden the truck off an unused road, covered it with branches so the troopers wouldn’t spot it.

“Marl don’t like goin’ jackin’.” Al spat on the ground, a curious note of pride entering his voice. “My boy Marl, he hates the woods.” He grinned at the pines.

Wes had heard all about Marl Spencer’s hatred of the woods. Local gossip was full of it. Wes clenched his fists. He figured anybody that would set fires would do anything. His fists ached—somebody ought to take that loony kid out in the woods and shoot him. He gritted his teeth, flexed his hands. “So what happened to ole Lonny? I thought he’s s’posed to be yer helper.” He kept his eyes on the dry woods as he spoke. “Jus’ one match ’ud do it,” he whispered to himself.

“That drunken bastard Lonny don’t do shit,” said Al amiably. “I been good ta him too. Lettin’ him share a room wi’ my boy an all. He jus’ better be watchin’ that still, s’all I can say. Can’t even find ’im half the time. Sniffin’ after that Pam.” Al started talking about sex again.