Daren Dean

Mercury in Retrograde 3

Walker

Over the years apathy sat down on Walker Scofield's ears like a favorite cap. Some said he quit living the same day his wife died in childbirth with their fourth and last, and also dead. His grandsons made life worth living when he gave it some thought. They pissed him off a lot too. Troy was the wild one. Royal was a quiet one. Bad times pulled at his features until his eyes, lips, ears, and skin hung as if in a state of depression--leathery and dissolute. Even his protuberant nose appeared to teeter on the precipice of his face, in an almost comical manner he glowered at the world like a harridan.

He arranged buckets of bait in the back of his rusting pickup. Just as he was going for an odd assortment of makeshift poles, some store-bought and others not, a fice he never saw before shot out from under the porch barking like the lord of the manor at the sound of someone or something coming up the hill.

"You there, dog," the old man bent down and picked up a good throwing stone. "Shut the hell up!" He grabbed at his back and let the stone drop from his fingers. The little dog wagged a ragged stub of a tail hopefully, but seeing the old man stooped over made him cry out and dive underneath the porch.

"Here now," a dark-headed boy with curly brown hair riding a white mule up the gravel road guffed. The mule's eyes rolled back in bad-tempered abeyance as he bared his teeth at the old man. "Hey there, Granddad."

"I ain't your daddy," Walker grumbled. "What's that white on your face?"

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Spook makeup from Halloween."

"Why you got on your face now? And, you say sir when you talk to your elders."

The boy shrugged. Gathered himself and dismounted.

But by virtue of his age he had been christened Granddad by a family member--he could not remember who but figured it was a little girl. Things were clear to him for short bursts only to cloud again. He bluffed people when he knew he couldn't recollect something he should. He divined the boy on the horse might be his younger brother, John Wesley, but he was dead. Died in the war. Which one, he didn't remember. He gave up trying. Threw up his hands in a silent gesture of disgust at his failing memory.

"It's your favorite grandson," the boy slid off the mule and tied it up at the plum tree. "You forgot me already?" The boy laughed when his comment failed to engender a response from the old man. "Royal."

"Oh you," Walker spit on the ground. "Don't tie your horse up there. He's gonna founder if he starts eating all them old rotten plumbs."

"He ain't a horse," Royal contradicted. "He's a Missoura mule."

"I don't give a good goddamn. Take him off my place. Back to you alls."

"You're in a mood," Royal said. "Going fishing?"

"Nome," Walker shoved the poles down into the pickup bed as if the boy hadn't seen them already. The old man put his hand on the dirk knife in the leather holster at his hip, a silent threat, as he glared into the early afternoon sun. The two were silent as they stood looking at each other, twenty feet separating them like duelists. "John Wesley," Walker declared, "You're barefooted."

"Yep," he shook his head. "I sure as shit am."

"You always had a smart mouth on you," Walker spit a gob of phlegm on the ground. "I guess that's why I always liked you." He nodded toward the passenger door. "Go wash that shit off your face."

He took the bridle off the mule and slapped it on its haunch, "Go home!"

The mule walked away with an air of indignance.

"He knows he's half a mile from home, but he'll probably follow us."

"Watch out for the rooster," Walker warned. "He'll jump on your back and kick you with his spurs."

"Is that right?" he said with more than the average amount of irony.

"Yes. It is." Walker stared at him. The whites of his eyes glassy and yellowed. "What were you, anyway?"

"What?"

"What were you for Halloween?"

"A ghost."

Walker could not remember events from the last several months. His mind was like a cloudy day covered with storm clouds and yellow lightning flashes, playing tricks on his memory. No one came to visit him that he didn't put to work moving cattle or mending a fence, or even riding a green-broke horse, but at the same time that person walked away with a hunk of "possible" meat from his freezer or a few bucks for his efforts even if the identity of the frozen carcass was questionable. Nana and Walker were quite a team, but now she was gone and the old man had lost all control of himself. Except when people came for him to take him away to the nursing home or state hospital, and then his mind became as clear as an iced lake.

Besides, Royal knew all about that crazy rooster.

The old man slammed the door shut, let out the choke, had the truck pulling off so fast the boy had to step on the running board to open his door and slide onto the cloth bench seat. Walker eyed the boy with drooping, suspicious, eyelids like he was about to tell an off-color joke or propose something probably indecent as he gripped the wooden ball mounted to the steering wheel and cranked it in a circle to turn around in the yard. He shifted into second as the truck moaned about going down the steep gravel hill. The boy planted his feet on the floor to avoid being pressed against the windshield for the steepness of the hill. At the bottom of the hill they had picked up some speed despite being in second and the ancient floorboards of the bridge grumbled at their impertinence.

"Mind if I turn on the radio?" asked Royal.

"Suit yourself," Walker hollered in his nasal twang over the sound of the engine. "But mind you, I don't like that caterwauling be-bop music."

"What's be-bop music?"

Royal turned the knob, but nothing happened. The boy started to say something, but he looked over and the old man was grinning like a coon. He knew he would just be adding fuel to his Granddad's odd sense of humor.

"It don't work," Walker snickered into his shirt sleeve.

Out of the heavy red and black flannel shirt the old man wore he produced a little silver flask and tipped a drink.

"What's that?"

"My medicine," Walker grinned. "Want some?"

"Nope."

"White lightning," he half-yelled. "It'll put hair on your balls. You probably need some of that, huh?"

The boy shook his head with a grin.

Walker remembered all the old things best. He knew all the back roads. He took a dirt road, heading toward the Missoura river where he liked to take his boat down the current and head southwest down the Osage river where it branched off. He wasn't interested in going down the Missoura all the way to Jeff City. He downshifted on the sharp curves near Mokane passing verdant fields of wheat and corn of those farmers not afraid to gamble on the floodplain. The truck slowed to a ticking halt, and he pointed out the roof and chimney of a house poking out the surface of the river; someone's heartbreak and tale of wretchedness and despair. Whenever they came this way he always pointed out the house so the boy wondered if it had belonged to the old man or if it was a ritual they had fallen into or just plain forgetfulness. Royal never said, I know or You've shown it to me before.

After driving a few miles parallel to the river they veered off the road and down a gully between an ash tree and a weeping willow, down an embankment. Royal put a hand to the dash when they came to a jerking stop. The boy climbed out of the rig, looked down at the dry ground and was relieved they wouldn't be walking back. There were old ruts and footprints in the dry, hard-packed, earth.

The old man was already uncovering the skiff he had squirreled away in a natural cove just big enough to accommodate it. Walker pulled the cut willow branches, now yellowed and papyrus, away so he could get at a battered tarp. Sun motes danced through a break in the clouds, a stream of illumination in the hills from heaven, as they worked as a team folding the weather-beaten tarp to lay in the pickup bed. Then they began to work on transferring pale buckets of bait from the truck to the skiff. The poles were the last items they had to get, out of deference, they handled the rods and reels like sacred objects careful not to tangle the lines or hook a thumb. Walker talked like he hadn't in years, but he kept forgetting that the boy was not John Wesley. It was easier to give in and believe his brother was still alive so he allowed himself the luxury, besides the boy didn't seem to mind. The boy still wore his spook makeup.

The waters were thick with carp, garfish, bluegill, and catfish. Their singing voices, under the muddy surface, came to Walker clearly as he baited the newest pole for John Wesley. They drifted downstream in the torpid water, passing the mouth of the cove the crumbled ruins of a concrete stanchion bearing the answerability of a religious structure. The old man was always conscious of a face on the pole so he never failed to lift a hand or speak to the being but with the boy sitting across from him he was too self-conscious to do more than nod gravely.

"Watch out for that sandbar, Granddad."

"I seen it," he trailed the oar behind the skiff, expertly cutting it at an angle to move around the isle.

The boy tossed out his line as they drifted, a violent breach of etiquette to Walker. He stared at the boy wide-eyed but he didn't care to notice the disapproving gaze. The old man was always angry, but he didn't think to question why;. one minute he wasn't and the next minute his temper got the best of him. Finally, he made a circular motion to the right of his fist so the boy would reel in his line again which he did. Grunting quietly to himself, he waited until they came to a favorite spot down another inlet virtually inaccessible by land and still remote by anything but a small cautious craft. They had to duck their heads under low-lying branches creating a natural archway to a netherworld, dark and anomalous. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds. Colors drained from the air as trees became stained ink blots. The shape of a heron posed ahead with a tadpole or crawdad in its mouth, before moving from view between the cattails.

Around the bend a large boulder came into view. Walker knew the water was deep here, where logic dictated it should be shallow. He pulled the oar out of the tributary and shook off the excess wet and placed it on the floor of the boat. Through a break in the trees, behind a film of clouds, the corona was visible but it was like a final curtain call as the cool shade blocked out the firmament. As a young man he considered himself a heroic figure flaunting a defiant fist at the earth-shaker, but now in his old age he preferred to merely remain hidden.

The tranquil water exploded as the boat careened wildly starboard. The boy cannonballed into the water, only removing his shirt and tennis shoes. His head bobbed up laughing and he treaded water with his hands.

"John Wesley! You're gonna scare off all the fish!"

"Sorry. I thought you came back here to drink. I didn't know we was really going fishing, especially since you made me reel in my line earlier."

"I was just getting us to this here spot, is all," he said as the boat almost made a complete revolution. Walker held a hand in the air as a gesture once cataleptic and mute with barely suppressed rage.

The skiff was near a little white beach so Walker got out, pulling it up partially out of the stream. A wall of sun-bleached creek rock rose up twenty yards behind the white sands as locusts called down from the trees in a deafening cacophonous song. The old man sat down on a pale barkless log, lacquered from the summer humidity, the precise height for a fisherman to sit on comfortably. Instead of casting his line he reached into his side pocket, pulled out his makings, and began to contruct a cigarette. The boy struggled with his wet clothing, stuck to his body, and fell to the ground with a thud--pants around his ankles. Walker smiled to himself as he lit a wooden match off the fly of his trousers.

"You all right, JW?"

"No."

Half a dozen turkey vultures were riding the wind currents across the rock face. Hovering overhead, they hardly moved, like fearsome kites the birds were clearly intent on something in the woods nearby. The boy pointed at them eagerly, but Walker sat where he was as if chained. He knew to investigate was to invite disaster on an otherwise lovely day, the sun shimmering off the gently lapping waves and fish milling in the muddy branch at his feet. Drawing heavily on the cigarette, his exhalation of smoke was almost a sigh. Gird up your loins, he told himself but he continued to sit. Even positioned himself so his back was to the cliffs and the ominous hovering vultures and looked down the natural tunnel the trees made back to the Missouri where he could just make out a passing barge on the waterway. A crimson male cardinal and its dullish mate flittered in the undergrowth as God only knew what the prey birds were worrying. He threatened to twist the boy's ears off if he went over that way. Besides, he knew the lay of the land over that direction and knew it was the perfect spot to lay somebody low or dump a body if that was a man's business.

Without looking he knew an old black Union Pacific railroad car sat corroding, a home for vagrants and assorted feral creatures at times. A shack balanced twenty feet up in the air on stilts was not too far away where hobos might fight over a toothless woman, a piece of territory, a can of beans, or maybe even an indigent boy. So despite his misgivings he left his fishing tackle where it lay, motioning to the boy to follow with his head. As the boy drew close he could see his heartbeat in his throat, or perhaps he only sensed his excitement.

Walkerhad to make a path as the boy was only wearing his briefs. He mashed down some sticker bushes as he made a beeline for the foot of the cliff. He noticed some ragweed, castoff from the nearby cornfield, waving subtly two feet away as he stopped to investigate he saw a small copperhead shimmying away from them. The boy saw it and made as if to pursue it but Walker snapped his fingers and pointed at him to leave it alone. A sixth sense told Walker a dead body was near, a human one. He did not know if he wanted to find it, but he felt the weight of responsibility now to discover or reclaim it if necessary.

They walked further than they thought would. The boy's bare feet were hurting too much so he sat down on a nearby rock as the old man pushed on. Powerful wings beat up ahead. Black feathers floated on the humid atmosphere and the horrible cries of the great birds filled the air like purgatorium on a business day. A large body lay up against the ashen cliffs, a sorrel hide with jutting rib bones in the long sleep. An old cow returning to the earth, either through decomposition or through the bellies of vultures. Old girl, he thought sadly. Too sadly. Emotions gripped him, grief, but he did not know why. He rubbed his cigarette along the bottom of his boot and put the stub in his pocket.

"Granddad. Over here, Granddad!"

Walker felt like a hand gripped him by the throat. He turned and trotted back to the boy in an ambitious gait, no longer sitting on the stone. Staring stupidly at the rock, he waited and he heard the boys voice again back on the beach. His breath already ragged in his chest, he pulled up next to the boy who stood with his hands on his knees, hunched over near the foot of the boulder. Half in the water a bloated man's body lay wet on its side, skin poached and rotting from the sun, but frozen in an angle impossible in life. He made the sign of the cross to ward off evil spirits.

"Bitching," the boy said.

Walker smacked him in the mouth with the back of his hand.

Royal's hand went up to cover his mouth with an expression equal parts trauma and horror.

"We're going to have to tell somebody about this," Walker said.

"I wonder if Troy killed him?"

"Don't be ignorant, boy. Troy never killed nobody."

"Well, I'm just saying."

A crow hopped on a fallen ash tree a few yards away with a mournful croaking noise. Walker shook his head and kept shaking it. He did not want to turn the body over and look at it. It might be someone he knew. His hand reached out to the boy's shoulder and drew him away from the cadaverous heap. A spirit continued to move around its body. A wind came into the thicket from the northeast turning the blood cold.

"They shitfire," Walker grabbed the collar of the dead man's shirt and pulled it away from the water. "Get on out of here," he shouted impotently at the crow and the circling of the vultures. The earth spun wildly as he looked up at the birds hovering on the updraft against the cobalt sky. His foot twisted against a piece of driftwood and he sat down hard on the seat of his pants. He began to howl like an infant. The drama of the moment terrified him, his mind filled with snakes twisting and roiling in a ball picking up momentum as it rolled engulfing him until finally the serpents soared and spun over a stone cairn like a world, a living monolith in his psychotic mind; a monument to terror and a thousand supressed, furtive, familial secrets. A death bird with black wings and a subhuman face stood in front of him. He dared not look at the face, but the neon blue wings were like a dragon fly. It reached out to him, this grim reaper, and put a bloodless hand on his shoulder pulling

him down into its dark warren. The creatures clicking palat echoing in his ears. A horrific vision he knew, without thinking it, he would not remember like his past lives if he could ever wake himself up.

"Granddad. Are you all right?"

"What?"

"You okay?"

"Why? What happened?"

"Your eyes rolled up in the back of your head and your body was shaking."

"Oh that," the old man stood up and rearranged his twisted clothes. "I've done that a couple of times before. Hope it didn't scare you too much."

"I didn't know what to do."

"There wasn't nothing to do about it. It just happens."

The boy came over and put his arms around him. It made him jump reflexively his arms came up, because Royal hadn't hugged him in several years--not even at Christmas. He tried to hug the boy back but he was out of practice and the best he could do was clasp one of the thin forearms in his hand and shake it. Now he saw the boy clearly, a muted amber silhouette clung to his body. He was not John Wesley or Royal but he saw him as he was and as he would be by and by. Royal rubbed his arm where his Granddad's silver watch had scraped his skin in their awkward embrace.

"I'm sorry for smacking your jaws earlier."

"That's okay, I deserved it."

"I know you did. I didn't say you didn't."

"What're we going to do about that thing?"

"That feller ain't going nowhere. His going days is over."

He took out his flask and took a few pulls as he mulled things over. The horror of the dead man receded and now it could have been a possum on the side of the road for all seeing it moved him. He walked over to the skiff and gathered their gear, and began shoving the prow into the stream.

"C'mon, if you're going with me. Maybe you want to stay with your new friend?"

"No," the boy looked over his shoulder as if the dead man might awaken and follow. "We just going to leave it here?"

"We're going to the law."

"Sheriff Merrill?"

"Who's that?"

"He's the new Sheriff."

"All right then," Walker said.

The boy jumped into the boat as the old man pushed it in a little half-moon as it spun about to face the river. He pulled himself heavily into the skiff and did not allow himself to look back at what had happened, the remains of the man behind him. His mind refused to consider death as the eventual fate of himself or his kin but he knew it just the same.

"Where do you think Troy is?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think he killed him?"

"Nome. I don't. I already told you to quit talking like that."

"He killed Phelps, didn't he?"

"Yes he did, but that was a different case entirely."

"Why?"

"You'll understand someday. When you start liking girls, you might understand a little then. When you like them and they don't like you back."

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March 3, 2010