The Nameless Dark: A Collection, page 14
Snow begins to fall, slicking the deck. It’s Christmas time in the dying weeks of ‘88, but no one seems to remember. No carolers stroll the streets of Arkham. No bells ring in the church houses. This isn’t that kind of city, which is why they are passing through here.
The ship docks, and I disembark down the gangplank, slipping with my seventh step. A sailor catches me by the arm. “Watch yourself, miss,” he says with a grin, revealing a sporting history in several missing teeth. “Don’t want to drown yourself a foot from shore.”
I nod, feigning a coquettish blush that hides the burn of anger at my unsteady stride. For stumbling, even slightly, while the black seawater waits and watches below me.
“You arrived from London, then?” the sailor asks while escorting me to the pier, stepping lightly on the plank to not disturb my balance.
“Yes.” I scan the wharf.
“Terrible business happening there, with that Jack the Ripper running the streets.”
The name brings me back to attention. “Indeed, sir. A woman is lucky to make it out alive.”
“Old Bloody Jack wouldn’t like your type, I don’t reckon.”
I arch an eyebrow to the high heavens.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he sputters. “Just meanin’ that you bein’ such a fine lady and all, not like those brothel slags who got carved up proper.”
I say nothing, as there is nothing to say.
“A bird’s gotta keep her eyes open back home. Never know if Jack’s headin’ your way.”
I can’t help myself. “What if he’s headed your way?”
The sailor is about to respond, but swallows his words. He tips his cap and hurries back to his ship. The fear has spread, as the game continues.
I called myself Jack in Londontown, but that’s not who I am. That was just the latest mask, the newest nickname, and just as insipid as the others. And there will be others.
My name is The Truffle Pig, hard trained to root out the fungus. I am your protector, the 42nd of my kind. I was yours truly, and I will be again soon.
So next, Chicago.
Beer & Worms
Russ placed a six-pack of Storz tall boys, a box of hooks, and a sealed filet knife on the counter and waited patiently. It felt good to just stand there and do nothing. He’d left his watch at home, fingers absently touching the pale ring on his wrist where the hair had rubbed smooth.
He gazed around the store, settling his eyes on the faded Chesterfield poster above the register, which showed Ronald Reagan smoking a cigarette. “The voice of the turtle,” it announced under his name, followed by “ABC.” Always Buy Chesterfield. A forgettable country song filtered through a closed door in the back, blending with the bubbling of the minnow tanks and industrial hum of the coolers.
The door opened and a wiry man emerged, carrying a box. “Land sakes! Russ, is that you?” he said, heading toward the counter.
“Mornin’, Joe.”
“Surprised to see you in here.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You know. Bein’ September and all.”
“The beans’ll grow just as well without me for a day.”
Joe laughed. “Ya, I ‘spose they will. Prices probably won’t, though.” He rang up the beer, slowly circling and punching the buttons on the register as if he was trying to remember.
Russ nodded to the hooks. “You got anything bigger than a nine aught?
“‘Fraid not, Russ,” Joe said, sounding more regretful than one would think appropriate for the situation. “Don’t have much call for anything bigger ‘round here. Maybe out by McConaughy, where they got them six foot muskies. Take your arm off with one chomp.” Joe finished ringing up the items. “No ‘crawlers, huh?”
“Not today. Mixed up a batch of stinkbait.”
Joe nodded. “Yeah, too hot for bass, I ‘spose.”
“Too hot for everything but cats.”
“Suckers and bullhead. Gar, maybe. Course, the sunnies are always bitin’.” Joe thought about this, crossing one of his eyes with concentration, then brightened back to attention. “You headin’ down to the Platte?”
“Nah. Goin’ after that big sumbuck on the Jansen’s back forty.”
“Whoo-boy! Ol’ Dale says it’s gettin’ big enough to eat a calf.”
“Just as long as he’s big enough to swallow a nine aught.”
“Got some liver that’ll work wonders.”
“I’ll go with the stinkbait today. New recipe, and all. Wanna try it out.”
“You know best,” Joe said, carefully putting each item into a separate paper bag. “When I was a kid, we used salmon eggs to catch trout.”
“Not much trout ‘round here.”
“True enough… That was back east. Aunt’s place in Delaware.”
Both men stood in silence for a few moments.
“That’ll be $4.25,” Joe said.
Russ counted out a few bills, then dug into his pocket for change. “Throw in some of that deer jerky, will ya Joe?”
“It’s coulee. All that’s left from last year.”
“That’s fine. It’s not for me anyway.”
The whitewall tires spun quiet down the last few feet of asphalt before Dutch Hall Road gave way to gravel, marking the county line. Farm ponds dotted the wilder areas between 80-acre plots of corn and soybeans, collecting the spill-off below terraced hillsides. Most of the farmers didn’t fish their ponds much anymore, and they’d be doggoned if they’d let any city folk traipse around their land in fancy hip waders from Cabela’s. That meant Russ had the pick of the litter as far as fishing holes, and today he picked Dale Jansen’s place.
Tiny rocks pinged off the undercarriage as a thick cone of gray dust billowed up behind the truck bed, where a Fenwick rod rested against a white plastic paint bucket and red metal tackle box. A pheasant rooster strutted across the road atop the next rise and disappeared into the plum thicket choking the ditch. Russ made note of the location, as no matter what this humidity told him, October would be here before you knew it.
Russ turned off Dutch Hall and headed down County Road 23, easing past the slumping houses, rusted trailers, and mud yards of the Kennard outskirts, back out onto the arrow straight line of gravel, until the stand of trees surrounding the Jansen farm came into view.
He passed the dirt driveway, slowed at the cattle grate separating two squared ends of barbed wire, and turned onto the grassy tractor path between the yellowing corn and the scanty shelter belt of piss elm and cottonwood.
The truck bumped along the rutted slope, the tall fescue muffling the sound of the engine as it slithered underneath. He crested the hill and descended the other side, to a low area in the land where four fence corners from four farms converged. The pond that had formed was mostly on Jansen land, but a bit of it bled over onto the other plots, allowing them access. Even so, no one fished back there except Dale, as everyone else that had claim was too old, too concerned about what they would pull out of that pond after years of fertilizer runoff, or dead.
Russ parked a good distance away from the water. He got out of his pickup, the various paper bags in his hand, and hauled the white bucket from the back, grunting under its weight. He chuckled to himself as he picked up his rod and tackle box with two spare fingers, and swished his boots through the brome toward the pond.
Dale sat in a frayed lawn chair just a few feet from the muddy shore, hunched over his line as he threaded an egg sinker just above the swivel.
“You’re puttin’ all the fish to sleep.”
“Well, look at this,” Dale said, spinning in his chair but not getting to his feet. Russ walked up and set the bucket next to Dale, who grinned at him from under the brim of his green Cargill hat, squinting through the sun. “Didn’t expect to see you out here ‘til after next plantin’.”
“Brought you somethin’,” Russ said, handing him a paper bag.
Dale took it and peered inside, pulling out a hunk of dry, blackened meat. “Okay!” He sniffed the jerky. “This ain’t muley, is it?”
“Shoot. What you got there is corn fed Papio whitetail.”
“Velvet of the plains,” Dale said with a smile and took a bite. He fought a frown. “A little gamey for whitetail.”
“You take what you can get in September. Beer?”
“Much obliged.” Dale cracked open his tall boy and took a long drink. He burped and set about baiting his line, hooking a greasy shad to each prong. Russ hadn’t yet touched his gear, nor opened the beer in his hand.
“Hotter than the dickens out here,” Dale said.
“Boy, you said it.” Russ stared out at the unbroken surface of the water. The dead branches of a hackberry tree reached into the cloudless sky on the far shore. “Too hot for bass.”
“Too hot for everything. Doubt even the bullheads will be bitin’ much.”
“Bullhead’ll bite in a tornado.”
“Ya, I ‘spose so.”
“I ain’t goin’ for bullhead today.”
Dale looked up at Russ, whose shadow loomed over him. “The big cat?”
Russ grinned slyly. Dale returned to baiting his hook. “Figured it had to be a special occasion.”
Russ took a seat on the bucket. “Sure is.”
Dale set his rod over his lap and took another swig. “Appreciate the beer.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“You bring the ‘crawlers?”
“No sir.” Russ slapped the bucket under his legs, which thudded like it was filled with cement. “Brung us some homemade stink bait.”
Dale whistled low. “Hate to think you went to all that trouble. Fish haven’t been bitin’ for squat.”
“Wasn’t no trouble at all. I’ve been meanin’ to try out this recipe for a while. Comin’ down here and goin’ for the biggun just gave me an excuse.”
“Ready to get after it, huh?”
“Figured I would. Got the freezer space.”
“Bring the camera?”
“Back in the truck.”
“Man’s gotta have a goal.”
“Nothin’ wrong with that.”
“Boy, you said it.” Dale opened another beer and lit up a Winston while Russ packed his lower lip with Skoal. He rubbed a little on his upper lip, under his nose, stood, and peeled off the lid of the plastic paint bucket. He reached in and pulled out a handful of bait that looked like dark brown cookie dough, peppered with flecks of red and white. Dale wrinkled his nose. “That’s ripe.”
“Not quite primed, but it’ll get there.” Russ handed the glob to Dale, who looked up at him. “Give ‘er a shot.”
Dale shrugged, ripped the three small fish from the tines, and formed the stink bait into a ball around the hook. He grimaced at the odor. “How’s Nancy?”
Russ spat. “Well, you know.” He grabbed his own wad of bait, pressed the lid back on the bucket, and sat down on it again.
Dale shot a glance at Russ before casting deep, pulling the line up short so the bait fell with a mushy plop a few feet in front of the stand of drowned trees. “Surprised she let you come out, with the season and all.” Dale reeled in his line a crank or two, then let it sink to the bottom, anchoring the handle into the sandy mud and resting the reel seat lightly in his palm. “That’s some heavy bait.”
Russ chuckled. “Used the good stuff.”
“Gonna have to give me that recipe,” Dale said. “If it works.”
“That’s a deal,” Russ said, throwing his own line into the pond, close to Dale’s, but still far enough away to avoid a tangle.
Dale exhaled a hiss of smoke. “The kids?”
“Chris left for Lincoln last week. Won’t see him ‘til Thanksgiving, most likely. Connie hasn’t called for a while. Still got a girlfriend, I hear.”
They sat as the sounds of the late summer insects danced in the grass around them one last time.
“You hear ‘bout ol’ Denny Goetsch?” Dale stubbed out his cigarette in the wet soil.
“A shame what happened to him.”
“Hogs took him down to nothin’. Only left the skull and his right foot ‘cause it wouldn’t come out of the boot.”
“Hammer toe came in handy at the end.”
“I ‘spose. Them ol’ boars could eat a tractor tire if you left it in the pen.”
“Gotta watch ‘em close.”
“Shoot ‘em if they get too big.”
“Shoot ‘em all if you’ve got a bad heart.”
“And a hammer toe.”
They both laughed.
“A shame what happened to him, though,” Russ said.
“Sure is. Wife and kids left without a man.”
“Crops still in the field, and he just paid off his combine. Who’s going to move them hogs to market?”
“Won’t get my auger back now. Denny had it two years. Never brought it up.”
“Probably get it back at the auction.”
“Yea, I ‘spose.”
Something large and dark broke the surface of the pond, rolled, and shimmied back to the bottom.
“There’s your hoss,” Dale said. He put another cigarette between his lips. “He don’t seem to like the bait.” Dale glanced sidelong at the bucket, then up at Russ.
Russ reeled in slowly. “You got somethin’ on your mind?”
Dale took off his hat and wiped his brow. He was sweating more than the heat demanded. “Well, I gotta tell ya,” he said, winding up. “I’m just real surprised to see you out here, is all. With the way Nancy got after ya last time you came out fishin’ while the crops were still in the field, I—”
“You what?”
“Well, I got a whole lot of respect for you. Doin’ what you wanted to do, pissin’ on the consequences. Lord knows Nancy can get difficult.”
Russ spit, removed the chew from his lip and flicked it to the ground. “I killed her, Dale.”
Dale blinked at the distorted reflection of the sun glinting off the pond. “How’s that?”
“I killed her.”
“You killed who?”
“Nancy.”
Dale swallowed hard, smoke sputtering out of his nose. “Good Christ, Russ. What’d you go and do that for? She runnin’ around on ya?”
“Nancy? Shoot.” Russ snorted. “A guy can get pretty desperate, but I don’t know a man alive within a thousand miles that would want to lay down with a cripple.”
“Slippin’ on her chores, then? She don’t move as well as she used to, I ‘spose.”
“No, that wasn’t it, either. She was doin’ enough. Doin’ what was expected of her, I guess.”
Dale clamped his teeth together. “So then what?”
Russ’ eyes followed a flock of starlings that were swarming around a lone cottonwood the next field over, fighting for a limb. “Last week, I was sittin’ there in the kitchen, stirrin’ my coffee, thinkin’ ‘bout how nice it would be to stop by Joe’s, pick up some beer and some worms, and head out here to go after the big one. Then I thought about havin’ to ask permission. Havin’ to ask permission from a woman. What’s the world come to?”
Dale shrugged his shoulders a few times, as if trying to loosen something inside of him. Russ reeled in his bait and looked at the ball on the end of the hook. Not even a nibble taken out of it.
“If a man can’t fish when he wants, he ain’t no man at all.”
Dale popped open another beer. Loose Winstons fell to the mud from a shaking soft pack and sucked up the pond water.
“So anyway, I walked up to Nancy while she’s fryin’ up some eggs, thinkin’ ‘bout how I was gonna ask her ‘bout me goin’ fishin’, when I should have been tellin’ her, and then it dawned on me.” Russ opened a beer and set it down without taking a drink.
“What did?” Dale’s voice was hushed and failing, as if he started talking at the very end of a breath.
“I’d rather kill her.”
“You’d—”
“I’d rather kill her than ask her.”
Dale worked his tongue, searching for moisture. The surface of the pond broke with the gulp of a giant mouth swallowing a feather it mistook for something else.
“So she’s lying there—outside, you know, because I didn’t want her to bleed out all over the kitchen floor. Head wounds spurt like somethin’ else, with the arteries and all… and I figure what I done could kill two birds with one stone.”
“Russ, I—”
“I need to get rid of the mess, and now that I have all this free time to fish, I’ll need money for bait. Tackle I got. That don’t wear out. But bait, well, that’s another matter. That’s out of pocket. Joe don’t run tabs these days, and I got that old cob grinder my daddy left me. A few spare buckets left from paintin’ the barn…”
Dale’s long ash hung from his cigarette like a bent, shriveled finger.
“With the weather bein’ so muggy, I figured she’d cure up right in a few days, and make some darned good stink. That was last Thursday.”
Dale smelled his fingers, then leaned over and retched, the chair breaking apart, sending him to the mud.
“It’s the funniest thing,” Russ said. “Human beins’ fall just like hogs when you hit ‘em square between the eyes. I wonder if ol’ Denny Goetsch knew that.” Russ reeled his line from the water and dangled the dripping stink bait in front of his eyes like a swinging medallion. “I had to tap Nancy on the shoulder to make sure she turned around first. Then—” Russ snapped his fingers, causing Dale to jump. He clambered backwards toward the grass, in the direction of the truck.
Russ walked after him, guiding the stink bait through the air, twirling it in circles. “Now, the only question is, Dale ol’ boy… We gonna keep fishin’, or are we gonna do somethin’ else?”
