pelham fell here

by Ed Lynskey

ED LYNSKEY's crime fiction novels include THE DIRT-BROWN DERBY (Mundania Press, 2006) and THE BLUE CHEER (Point Blank/Wildside Press, 2007). PELHAM FELL HERE will be published by Mundania Press in May 2008 with TROGLODYTES to follow in 2009.  A science fiction novel, THE QUETZAL MOTEL (Mundania Press) is also due out in 2008.
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Chapter 1

"That’s all I’ve got, sir."

At a covert glance, I took note of the new sales girl wearing a crisp, white blouse. She was speaking to a hunter.

"The hell you say." The tendons corded in Sugg’s neck. His sun-chapped face had a menacing look.

She tilted her chin at the boxes of shotgun shells on the glass countertop. "That’s it. I’ve rechecked. We’ve sold out. Sorry."

"The hell you say," repeated Suggs.

Shifting in closer, I propped my elbows on the beveled edge of the glass countertop and pretended to study the Luger out on display.

"You must stock extra number 8 lead shot." Suggs’ hands crushed the boxes. His inflection cut with a harder edge. "Well, don’t you?"

She folded her tan, bare arms on her chest, a defensive gesture. I saw goose bumps on her arms. "Cody has Fed Ex’d more. The truck will be here tomorrow morning." A perfunctory smile creased her lips. "I’ll call you, if you’d like."

Suggs snorted. "I’d like you to call Cody." He jabbed a finger as a pointer. "Go get him."

I started to say something but she spoke.

"Cody left for the day." She tapped the cash register keys, aloof to his adversarial glare. I saw her nipples emboss her blouse fabric, and Suggs’ dropped gawk did, too. "With state sales tax, the total is $64.65," she said.

"Have Cody buzz Suggs Pella. We’re old pals." Leaning on his elbows over the countertop, Suggs reached and cupped his hand on her right breast. "Think he’d share you with me?"

She trembled for a second, and then slapped him across the nose.

"Ouch!" His hands flew up to nurse his bloody nose. "I’ll tie your tits in a knot, bitch."

"Yo, Suggs." I slapped him on the shoulder like good ole boys do. "How’s the shooting? Besides with your mouth, I mean." The odor of creosote staining his bibs warned me he had muscles from hard labor. He might win a scrum, but the bourbon I also smelled dulled his reflexes.

"Huh?" Dealing me a scowl, Suggs dabbed at his nose. "The doves are flying, but I’m stuck here jawing with you." Seeing the blood on his finger deepened his scowl.

"Some days are real pissers." My hand clapped his shoulder again. "Pay the lady and go get sober."

"I’m sober enough. Paw me again, I’ll show you." Suggs slapped down the money and brushed by the rack of shotguns. "Trailer trash," was audible before the door clanged shut behind him.

His accolade didn’t sway my attention on her straightening the key chains sold in a basket. Anger and maybe disgust pinched her eye corners and mouth.

"What might you want?" Her inflection grew wooden. "Like I said, we’ve got no more birdshot."

"Uh-huh."

"Thanks for running interference."

"Uh-huh."

"Cody has left to buy more guns."

"Uh-huh."

I identified her smoky lilt as a Virginia Tidewater native’s, probably on this near side of the Chesapeake Bay. What awed me was her hair -- cider-brown, curls swept back, and held by two barrettes. Her clean, soapy fragrance was a close second. She stood at average height, but this was no average package. Off the bat, I liked her but I browsed too long. Her eyes, sad and blue, flitted to check the wall clock.

"I’m no hunter," I said. "I like guns but not like a fanatic. I target shoot for sport."

She now had to wonder at my sudden garrulity.

"You’re not a local." I paused, unsure. "Or are you?"

"Sort of. Randall Van Dotson is my dad. I’m Rennie." After tossing her head that coy, sweet way girls do, she gave me a candid appraisal.

"Randall owns that tract of oaks. I’ve blasted mistletoe sprigs out of them. With his permission, I mean." Self-conscious, I quit talking. No wedding ring sparkled before her hands slid into her jeans pockets.

"Is it lunchtime?" Rennie craned her head and saw the clock hands hadn’t moved.

But my best chance is slipping away, I thought. She’d just smacked Suggs for pawing her and might resent my overtures, but I went for broke.

"Would you mind if I dropped by again?" I asked. Some broke.

"Why should it matter to me?" Rennie scratched on a smile, her first.

Satisfied, I turned and left the gun shop. Sitting in my truck cab I realized something.

"Guess what, Johnson?" My palm thumped my knee. "She doesn’t know your name." Then I cracked a grin. "Yet."

 

Chapter 2

That afternoon, chilly under a zinc-gray, overcast sky, I worked bush-hogging an ironwood thicket. Next spring in the new century, the Mormons wanted to seed this bottomland by Mosby River in corn or, quite possibly, they’d sell out to a developer. Regardless, my task was to mow off the scrub ironwood.

The clanky John Deere tractor lacked fenders. Dead animal bones and chunks of snakes flew up, lashing my boots. Every so often, the bush-hog’s twirling steel blades mauled a pile of flint, raising sparks, and a din that failed to dent my reverie.

Who was Rennie Van Dotson? Was she married? Widowed? Single? Did she date? She acted older. Was that a problem? The comical sight of Suggs’s bloody nose evoked my smile. I pictured her dad Randall on patrol, brandishing a Coleman lantern and 12-gauge shotgun, watchful to nail any mistletoe poachers. He blasted away at any noise, a dubious practice known as a "sound shot".

A half-hour shy of dusk, I mired the John Deere in a bog. I might chain its axle to my truck’s winch to extract, but I wanted to hunt up my cousin Cody Chapman to glean a little information. I knew where to catch him, too.

* * *

Fluorescents brightened the windows to Leona’s Bar & Grill in Pelham, Virginia. I saw a white Chevy van at the traffic signal make an illegal left on red. The V.F.D.’s whistle erupting made me flinch -- autumn’s first cold snap caused fires to ignite in dirty chimneys. The greasy whiff I smelled promised steaks on Leona’s grill.

Inside, Cody, 350 pounds in his sock feet, had commandeered a booth by a curtainless window. Cody almost lived at Leona’s. His signature Cherry Swisher cigar smoldered in the ashtray, and folded under it I saw The Pelham-Democrat. Cody had been admiring his weekly hunting-and-fishing newspaper column I seldom took time to read.

He motioned me over to sit opposite him. "How’s the turf farm treating you, cuz?"

"I quit. It was convict labor. Monday I started bush-hogging for the Mormons."

"Good for you. I bought some Marlin rifles ready for your magic."

Our fight, what had goaded me to quit working for Cody, in retrospect was asinine. Cody wouldn’t pay me overtime, just straight time, for my 60-hour workweek. We’d jawed over it; he wouldn’t budge; and I stamped out hotheaded. That was that.

Later crunching the numbers, I saw I cleared more on his sales commissions than I did with OT. He probably knew it, too. We smoothed things over, but I never worked at his counter again. Every few weeks I’d crate up Cody’s defective weapons, and he overpaid me for my gunsmithing.

"I’ll fix them this weekend," I said.

"You do that." Cody set down his fork before finger-tapping the ash cone off his cigar stub. "Leona, bring my cuz a bowl of split pea soup before he devours my supper."

"Coming right up," said the bony lady slicing a tomato behind the counter.

"Mind if I mooch a smoke?" I asked Cody.

Cody shrugged. "They’re the brand we geezers smoke."

"Skip it. I quit." I pocketed the cigarette I’d shaken out of his pack.

"Bully for you. I might next week."

Now I shrugged. "You gotta die of something."

Cody took his coffee 100 proof, spiked by the bourbon pint wedged between his thighs. The bourbon flushed down his steak cubes, mashed potatoes, and butter beans. Leona’s split pea soup tasted passable, and I talked between spoonfuls.

"I stopped by the shop. Keep that Luger. I’ll swap you, maybe for my Beretta." Then after a swallow, I dropped in with casual ease, "Your new counter girl is a looker."

"Uh-huh." Cody tweezed a tobacco fleck from his lips twisting into a grin. His draw down sparked the round glow to the cigar stub. Eyes on Leona’s ceiling fan, he spewed out a banner of smoke. I repressed a throat tickle to cough. Smokers weren’t reviled at Leona’s.

"You pups always come sniffing around."

"Is Randall her dad?"

"Yeah, but Rennie grew up on her mama’s place down in Tappahannock." A belch interrupted his gossip. "Her mama, I heard tell, was out pinning up the morning wash. Next thing, she keeled over dead. Heart attack. I didn’t know women got them, did you?"

"You gotta die of something." I ordered a beer from Leona and flexed my knees cramped under the tabletop. My boot bumped Cody. "Didn’t Randall do some time?"

Grunting, Cody moved his boot. "He got into a property line dispute with a neighbor. Things heated up. Randall threw the first punch."

"But didn’t he go to jail?"

Anger hardened Cody’s face. "Don’t you ask Rennie about it."

My palms heeled up. "Cool by me. So, what’s her story?"

Cody butted his cigar stub in the ashtray. "Randall sent her to me. I don’t know squat on her love life. She’s a class act and a hard worker. I wouldn’t like losing her. Got it?"

My lips quirked. The beer tasted like soy sauce. I set down the bottle and peeled off its label, stalling. Cody seemed overprotective. Was he sweet on her? "I heard you."

He used a paper napkin on his mouth. "Why do I sweat it? I’d bet that Luger you didn’t say ‘boo’ to her."

"Wrong. I’m not that pathetic."

"Wrong. You are. Quit slinking around like a whipped hound. I’m sick of it."

I’d already lined up a righteous payback for Marty my ex, but I didn’t share that mission with Cody. He’d try to dissuade me. "Marty cheated on me. Didn’t you catch her red-handed in bed?"

Cody studied me through the cigar smog, his eyes shrewd. Candor was his strong suit, why I valued him as a friend. "So I did. But ‘fuck ‘em and chuck ‘em’ is my motto. Why beat yourself up over Marty?"

"I’m a sucker for heartbreaks and sluts."

"Christ, you’re hopeless. How’s Chet?"

"Crazy as ever," I replied.

"You ain’t said shit. Chet dodged a bullet at his trial. Too bad Briones didn’t dodge Chet’s bullet. But Gerald is the psycho in that brood."

Gerald, Chet’s older brother, was my age, mid-twenties. "Gerald is cool. Just don’t cross him."

Cody grunted. "Gerald is one big, crazy-ass nigger."

I frowned. "Watch it, cuz. He’s my friend."

"Blood is thicker than water, I always say."

"No matter. Gerald is solid by me."

I saw out the window the same van, now a white blob in the semi-darkness, brake at the traffic light. Why was the van circling the block? The engine backfired, died, and the repeated ignition cranks couldn’t restart it.

Cody’s interest was also piqued. A flash of surprise lit up his face before he resumed talking. "Rennie will be off soon. Her Aunt Erin offered to pay for her college up north. Rennie’s somewhat mature, but there’s no better time to hit the books." He screwed the top back on his bourbon pint.

"What’s to entice a smart girl to live in Pelham?"

Cody’s gaze held mine. "Go get laid, cuz. It’d do your cynical attitude a world of good."

"Thanks, doc, but my attitude feels fine."

"Suggs waltzed in here bragging he’ll wax the deck with your ass."

"It’s just the booze talking." I saw the van’s driver step through Leona’s doorway. He wore a befuddled expression and a Confederate cap, the stars-and-bars flag decal pasted on its beveled front.

"Listen, my cuz is a tough guy."

"Rennie’s tough. She smacked Suggs for copping a feel."

"Good for her. I told you she takes no shit. Finish your beer and give that stranger a hand. I’ll get this mess. You fix my Marlins, and we’ll call it even. Deal?"

"Deal. He looks lost." I nodded at Rebby Cap eager to flag down a Good Samaritan.

Cody’s chuckle sounded forced. "He’s looking for something."

I strolled up and offered my aid to Rebby Cap. He eclipsed me by an inch and had blank grommets for eyes.

"You bet. My cell phone is busted," he said, his voice slow and sinister. "I think my alternator is shot."

Introductions were superfluous, and we headed out into the October chill. The jumpstart turned into a production. First, Rebby Cap chiseled $10 off me for "gas money". Second, the van’s radio blared out acid rock. Third, he had no jumper cables, and we improvised with mine.

Antsy to be off, I butted my truck’s grille against the van’s front bumper. I saw the headlight, driver’s side, was out and a Conquistador decorated the van’s side. My jumper cables just did clamp on our battery terminals. Rebby Cap’s sneakiness irked me. He cracked the van’s side door and hoisted in one leg at a time to prevent my glimpse of his jailbait waiting inside. The van windows and side ports had a tinted opaqueness. He rolled down his window.

"Turn down the music!" I yelled at him inside.

Rebby Cap complied.

"Crank and give her a little pedal," I said.

Rebby Cap spurted his engine to life and raced it until my battery had juiced his enough. The glass pack mufflers exploded like a grenade from under his chassis. Rebby Cap wiggled out his door, unclipped my jumper cables to fling aside, and climbed in to rocket off. I’d heard no thanks, just gotten panhandled for a sawbuck.

But I felt relief after he left. Rebby Cap smelled like trouble in spades, something I didn’t need.

 

Chapter 3

The next morning was a cloudy, raw Thursday. I used my truck winch to drag out the John Deere from the bog, and I bush-hogged a larger parcel of thicket for the Mormons. A drizzle saturated the bottomland enough to wet down the dust. By early afternoon, the overcast sky broke up a little to let in slivers of sunlight.

Before long, the sun heated the breezeless day into a rotisserie, and pesky deer flies stung through my t-shirt. The incessant pap, pap, pap to distant shotguns pounded the doves though only a few tail feathers ever fell to the ground. I yearned to start my own hunt, but like a working fool, I pressed on.

I charged a catbrier patch, its thorns clawing at my shins. I finished there and took five. Grateful for some quiet, I drank a cup of water dipped from an icy cold spring. It left a chalky aftertaste as I walked through the sumac stobs to board the John Deere. Bunching up, the dark clouds returned.

The rain soon pelted me, and the temperature plunged by fifteen degrees. October’s weather was unsettled. The John Deere waffled before it conked out, and I had to laugh at my snakebit luck. My grinding couldn’t kick over the engine. Soaked to the skin and clattering teeth sent me to my truck. The motor belched, and the heater’s blower wheezed. There had to be easier ways to make a living.

I witnessed the red clay churn into puddles of blood like those staining a combat zone. Not that I’d seen much live combat during my MP stint. Fort Riley in Kansas had been my home station. I’d hunted elk and quail there. Saw bald eagles and the rolling prairie. I did a few overseas deployments including one furlough in Ankara, a majestic city but without a drop of Kentucky bourbon for sale in it.

Rennie’s sad eyes resonated in my mind. So she was off to college. Chewing on that snarled my mood. I put on the radio. A signature bluegrass tune extolled this enchantress taking a guy down a notch, then ditching him "like a fox on the run". I’d hummed along to The Country Gentleman singing a thousand times before, and now the lyrics spirited me back to see Rennie. I pinned the accelerator.

At quarter till five, Cody’s gun shop, a low-slung brick structure with a flat asphalt roof, hadn’t yet closed. I braked in front of the Grumman canoes racked on shelves under a tin roof pavilion. I sat in the cab and, my eyes closed, used visualization to plot my approach. I’d go in and strike up a conversation.

"Hi. It’s Rennie, right? I never forget names. What’s say we go out tonight?"

Inside the gun shop was quiet as the familiar synthesis of gun oil and khaki tanged the air. I glanced left to right. A young couple -- she wore cornrows and he kept a hand on her tight ass -- picked through a bin of Civil War spurs, breastplates, and belt buckles Cody had out for sale. A photo gallery of his pals’ trophy game kills lined the knotty pine wall panels. The dead bears exhibited more grace than their scruffy hunters did. My gaze shifted. Today Rennie looked radiant in a cranberry red cardigan, snug but tasteful.

"May I assist you?" Her second look recognized me. "Oh . . . it’s you again."

"Johnson." I switched on my most winning smile. "Frank Johnson."

"How may I assist you, Frank Johnson?"

"Just Frank, please. I hoped we’d go out tonight."

"Sorry, Frank. My employer enforces a no-dates-with-the-customers rule, and I like my job. But thanks for asking."

"I’m no customer. I mean Cody is my cousin and he won’t mind." I gushed like an acne-scarred teenager.

Rennie allowed a guarded smile. "Persistence wins out, I suppose. Okay, I live at the old Shepherd place. My apartment is upstairs, first one on the right. There’s no number on the door. Come at seven and no earlier, please. See you then, Frank."

"I look forward to it," I told her, waving.

Back in my truck cab, I watched the young couple traipse out. They laughed. They were in love, and I’d been in that state once. Or so I’d thought.

I drove to the doublewide trailer where I lived in a trim mobile home park. A navy shower and two pats of Brut put me in high stride. My brief hiatus from the dating scene hadn’t dulled me. Why, I’d shake off the rust and charm the girl out of her melancholy airs. My heart thudded way up between my jaws.

* * *

By quarter to seven, I was speeding down Rogue’s Road -- muggers had waylaid naïve travelers here in Colonial days -- and hauled by a sprawling copse of oaks. Garm Castle, the top of its yellow brick parapets towering into view, sat couched further back among the oaks.

Garm, a homesick Scotsman, had erected the castle in the late 1890s and then sent for his new bride. They lived in the manor over a happy interval, but then Mrs. Garm contracted tetanus from pricking her finger on a rose thorn and died childless. They said Garm went insane and followed her to an early grave. The disused castle became Pelham’s most exotic landmark, and its imperceptible driveway offered our teenagers a lover’s lane. I’d parked on it.

I recalled when proud Sears homes and shady maples had flanked our town streets. Blondes wearing hot pants and flawless tans lounged on porch gliders, sipping on colas through bent paper straws. Cannas bloomed red as claret above the wrought iron fences, and the swept sidewalks sat even. But Pelham had turned shabby at the edges, and so had I. Here a few months shy of the new millennium, I’d fallen short of the brass ring. This truck and the leaky doublewide represented my sole wealth.

I passed a road sign advertising a new housing tract and frowned. Like I said, Pelham had turned shabby.

Eight minutes early, I docked across the way from Rennie’s apartment building, my truck engine idling to run the heater. The old Shepherd place squatted on the desolate end of Main Street. The out-of-town landlord had diced up the Victorian two-story into four cubbyhole apartments. The Shepherd’s oldest boy, Whit, had played star shortstop (a scholarship to Arizona State waited in his future) next to my serviceable third base.

My disaffection with Pelham started when Whit ran his VW off the rain-slick pavement into a telephone pole, died of his injuries, and his parents sold the house. I never saw the Shepherds again, but they were better off -- bailing from Pelham offered a shot at redemption.

Not long afterwards, I’d also left to serve in the Army MPs. MP work wasn’t sexy, but it was satisfying enough to take pride in doing well. After graduating from Military Police School, my beat was Fort Riley. I patrolled its gates and streets, writing up tickets (even for the brass) and arbitrating domestic disputes. Something of a barracks rat, I read a ton of pulp paperbacks. Prisoner escort duty sent me on trips throughout the mainland to fetch AWOLs back to face court martial. Most were scared kids, not much different from me.

The main rub was the lack of RnR and I burned out. Three years and three stripes later, I ejected from the MP Corps, vowing I’d never do police or criminal investigative work again. Instead, I returned home when I should’ve learned better. Lonely, I’d next tried marrying and then divorced the two-timing Marty. I curbed that unpleasant memory.

No lights blazed in the ground windows to the apartments rented by the old widows. The bright upstairs window had to be Rennie’s bedroom. I could picture her at the mirror dabbing on perfume before debating, then leaving her top blouse buttons undone. I grinned at my wishful thinking.

The truck cab had grown stuffy. I cut off the heater, slid out, and heaved the tool chest into the bed. The unscrewed gun rack went under the seat. The half-empty pint (I’d had no drinks all afternoon) fit in the glove compartment.

Whistling, I tuned in to WKQK, the last old-time bluegrass radio station in Virginia. Vintage Jim & Jesse, Reno & Smiley, Flatt & Scruggs, and Mac Wiseman wailed those mountain ballads pinching your heart in a forceps of woe and misery. Were they that far off the beam?

The night of my parents’ fatal auto smashup had brought a young deputy sheriff knocking on my aunt’s door. A few years older than me, Cody was off at summer camp. Sending a uniform to give a notification of death, I later learned, is standard police procedure. I hopped out of bed and beat her to answering the door.

The deputy sheriff had slouched in a yellow slicker on the stoop. The torrent drowned out his words until my aunt in her robe invited him into the foyer. He smelled of motor oil and dripped rainwater from his yellow slicker to pool on her terrazzo tiles. Stammered words spelled out the tragic reason for his visit --

A cant of my head saw the upstairs window blacking out. Rennie came skipping downstairs and through the door. Wearing no scarf or hat left her pretty face distinguishable. She’d dressed in a parka over a short, plaid skirt and black hose. Only she wasn’t alone.

Turning, she peered down. Two small children trailed her.

"For Christ’s sake, can you believe this?" I muttered.

Rennie tugged down the stocking caps over their ears. Their breaths created miniature haloes in the frosty air. The longhaired, little girl pointed at the glitter of stars. With a nod, Rennie glanced up. She clutched their small hands in hers and led their parade to the streetside Prizm. They piled inside it. The tailpipe smoked and the taillights reddened. I saw her take off and turn at the next block.

She’d scoot back in a few minutes – "seven o’clock, no earlier please". Did I take off like that fool of a fox on the run? Maybe. Cody’s sly omission of Rennie’s kids angered me, but I’d had a stomachful of moping. I cuffed off the radio, ranged out, and paced across Main Street to the apartment building’s porch. Waiting, I fished out the cigarette I’d bummed off Cody and lit it.

I exhaled the smoke, looking up at Orion the Hunter poised in our town’s night dome and marveling how a mother of two could stay so damn trim.

Copyright© 2008 Ed Lynskey

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