Believe No One (9 page)

He turned.

Mr Goodman, their nearest neighbour, was stretched out on a chaise longue by the open front door of his trailer. He was about the same age as Red's mom, his brown hair cut neat and short, and his beard was trimmed into a short goatee. A cooler box sat in arm's reach and he was sucking on a can of Sprite.

‘What's it to you?' the boy said.

‘Nothing at all.' He smiled like he thought it was a little bit funny. ‘Lord knows I played hookey more'n once myself when I was your age.'

‘Never said I was playing hookey.' Red checked around the corner of the trailer.

‘Who cares?' The man took another chug of soda and squirmed his shoulders into the back of the chair. ‘School learning's easy forgotten.'

‘Uh-huh.' All Red cared about was the bus was gone and so was the big bald man and his ugly-assed dog.

‘It's the lessons you learn from
life
you never forget – right?'

‘I don't know,' the boy said. ‘I only lived nine years, so far.'

‘Nine, huh?' He didn't take it like the boy was sassing him, even seemed impressed. ‘You're tall for your age – I'd of put you at ten at least.'

Red felt a small spark of pride. ‘I will be, come September.'

Mr Goodman nodded, and Red took another peek down the slope to the highway.

‘That bus is long gone,' Goodman said. ‘You might as well relax, enjoy the day off.'

‘I intend to.' Red shifted his backpack on his shoulder, getting ready to leave, but he lingered, staring at the can of cold Sprite sweating in the man's hand. The heat of the sun prickled on the back of his neck, and watching the man drinking down his soda gave the boy a powerful thirst. He couldn't go home and get one 'cos his momma was there and so was her boyfriend, back from his latest trip after two good days of peace and quiet.

Suddenly Goodman seemed to understand. ‘I'm forgetting my manners,' he said. ‘Here.' He lifted the lid off the cooler and tossed the boy a soda.

It felt cold and good in his hand. The boy reached for the ring pull.

‘Wait,' the man said. ‘Roll it against your neck.'

Red hesitated and Goodman said, ‘Go on, give it a try – you might like it.'

Red pressed the cold metal against his skin and felt the pulse jump in his neck; it did feel good.

Goodman licked his lips and said suddenly, ‘You like garter snakes?'

‘They're all right, I guess.' It seemed like an odd question.

‘Held one?'

‘No.' Red cracked the can and drank deep, tilting his head back.

The man watched him. ‘You got nothing to worry about – garters are not poisonous, not to humans.'

‘I know that,' Red said, nettled that anyone would think him ignorant of what was basic woodsman's lore.

‘I offended you,' Goodman said. ‘I apologize – a lotta kids even older'n you wouldn't know.'

Red shrugged, secretly pleased. He took another long pull on the soda and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He was ready to leave.

The man sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the lounger. ‘I got five garter snakes – three common, two chequered. The male chequered's got ivory and lemon chequers and salmon-pink eyes – a genuine albino. Wanna see?'

‘I don't know …'

‘He's quite a sight,' the man said, as if to say,
It's up to you, but you really would be missing something.

Red frowned, scuffing his shoe against the edge of the concrete driveway.

‘The female common garter is bearing young. Later in the summer, I should have a whole mess of snakelets. I could maybe give you one.'

‘Momma said snakes stink.'

‘Naw,' Goodman said. ‘Their
crap
stinks, but only till it dries, then you would hardly notice it. And I'd be sure and give you one that don't musk when you handle it.'

Red glanced up from his shoe point; Goodman did seem to know what he was talking about … He felt a little tug, like someone had taken hold of his sleeve and pulled him towards the door of that trailer.

‘I'm not allowed no pets,' he said, still resisting.

‘That's mommas for you – always out to spoil a boy's fun.'

The man grinned like he thought the boy should too. Red knew he should defend his momma, but in truth she
did
spoil his fun. If she went out to work, they would have money so he could have a garter snake and maybe even a dog he could take with him when he went out in the woods.

The man was watching him. ‘Let me tell you a mystery of this world I wish someone had told me when I was your age: what Momma don't know, Momma can't nag about. I mean, what you do in your own room is your own business – right? You
do
got your own room?' Red nodded and he said, ‘Good. All you need is a glass tank – I could give you the loan of a spare. Sneak that into your room, under the bed, in a closet – hell, you're a smart kid, I don't need to tell you, do I?'

Red bit his lip and the man's face twisted up and straightened itself out fast, like he had gas.

‘I should go,' the boy said.

‘You don't you want to come see my garter snakes?'

Red glanced uncertainly at the door of the trailer, at the darkness within.

‘What d'you say? Five minutes – I'll even let you hold the male.'

Red looked hard at the man. ‘Depends …' he said, but he already made up his mind.

The man's eyes widened. ‘On what?'

Red chin-pointed to the cooler. ‘Got any beer in there?'

‘Sure.' The man dipped in the cooler box and offered the boy a can of Coors, a slow smile spreading across his face.

Red snatched it and ran, vaulting lightly over the fence into the woods. Safe on the other side, he yelled ‘Pervert!'

Goodman came after him, but Red pitched the half-full soda can at him, getting him square in the chest. The boy did not wait to see the result; he ran, kept running, dodging and weaving like a football player, leaping over fallen branches and logs, beer can in his hand, his backpack bouncing on his shoulder, pushing deeper into the woods than he had ever been before, on and on, till the hot wet air almost smothered him. Panting, he climbed a rocky slope, crushing the spotted green leaves of elk heart underfoot so that the stink of rotting carrion followed him and kept on running till he breathed fresh air again.

Finally, he stopped, laughing and out of breath. ‘Goddamn pervert can hold his own “male”,' he said out loud, then spat to get the ugliness of the words out of his mouth.

He looked about him at oak and hickory and moss and briar, the moss so thick on the rocks it looked prehistoric. He turned full circle and it was the same all round.

‘Well, boy, you are lost,' he told himself. It seemed to quiet the fluttery panic rising in his gut, and he took a moment to get his breathing back to normal and just listen; if he could get to a roadway, he could find his way home. Over the high rasp of bugs he heard woodpeckers some way off. He saw a tree creeper going up a nearby oak in spirals, using its curved beak like a third foot. A wren gave a few short bursts of song close by then dashed across a deer trail ten or fifteen yards ahead, and on a whim Red decided that was where he would go. Ten feet along the trail, he was about to open his hard-won beer when he heard a low sound in the brush – almost like a shuffle. He glanced that way but moved on, heard it again, a minute later – a soft crunch of twigs and leaves and a single breath, somewhere between a sigh and a groan. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up; bears and mountain lions lived in the woods out here in Eastern Oklahoma. He had seen a black bear with his own eyes – the fat black rump working slowly through the underbrush not more than fifty yards from their trailer in early spring. He listened hard, but heard nothing more.

He took a few steps, heard again the movement of soft, careful footfalls.

If it was a bear, you were supposed to stand still and shout, ‘Hey, bear!' at the top of your lungs, 'cos bears will attack if you surprise them or get between them and their cubs, but they will do most anything to avoid an encounter with a human if they know you are around. But Red did not think it was a bear. Red thought it was a mountain lion.

The woods had got real quiet, like every bird and critter was holding its breath same as he was – even the bugs stopped chirping. He could climb a tree, but so could a cougar, or he could run, but not as fast. For a long minute he just froze, not knowing what to do. Then it was like someone turned the sound back up: the bugs and the birds started first, then he saw a whitetail on the trail ahead of him. It turned and saw him, kicked up its hind legs and vanished before he could get a good look at it. Seeing that whitetail move seemed to give him a nudge and he started to walk – slow and cautious at first, then bolder as the trail got wider. On a tree he saw a ‘No Trespassing' sign, but it looked old and lopsided and kind of friendly, like a kid would put up outside his den, so he didn't pay too much mind to it. He needed to find his way back, and the best way he knew was to find people, so more than anything he was encouraged by the sign.

At a clearing the trail disappeared. Grass and ferns grew tall in the first flush of spring green, and here and there he saw a butterfly flitter over the white and pink flowers down in the grass. He stashed his can of beer in his backpack, sat on his haunches and tracked left to right, looking for signs of a trail, and off to the south-west he saw it – a dip in the grass where it had been trampled. Remembering the soft footfall he had heard earlier and the stillness in the woods, Red stayed on the edge of the clearing, working his way around in the shade, using bushes and scrub for cover. He saw a pile of old chicken wire twisted up and dumped to the edge of the clearing. An empty plastic sack lay torn and empty under the wire, alongside a plastic gutter pipe. The path ran through a stand of oak and hickory. It widened to a kind of crossroads under the trees, and here the boy saw tyre tracks in the mud. He took a guess, turned right, but kept well off the track. A creek ran alongside the track a ways, but further on it diverted left into a biggish mosquito-infested pond. Someone had rigged a channel of plastic guttering from the pond. At intervals, black ribbed pipes led off from the channel into a stand of cut-down brush. He followed a section of pipe a few steps, tripped and fell headlong. Something swooshed a few feet over his head, swung back, thudded to a stop. He rolled and looked up. A rock the size of his head was embedded in the trunk of a sycamore just off the path. But as it stopped swinging, he saw that the ‘rock' was a block of wood; six-inch wood spikes stuck out at every angle.

The boy looked down to the place where he had tripped and saw a thin strand of copper wire.
Booby trap.
‘Shit …'

Trembling, he stood up, ready to duck if something else came swooping out of the trees. That trap had been put there to protect something worth stealing, he reckoned. He followed the tube of ridged pipe, watching where he put his feet. A strong, heavy smell reached him. Snuffling, he followed his nose and the black ridge pipe through the piles of cut brush into a sunny clearing. It was just like the one he had come from about a half-mile away, only this one was packed with tomato vines. Rows and rows of them behind a chicken-wire fence. The vines were trained against sugar canes and were almost as tall as him already. Tiny yellow flowers hung in bunches on the stems.

Why in the world would someone plant tomatoes this deep in the woods, and protect them with booby traps? The tomato stench was intense in the heat of the sun, but there was something else in there too – something sweet and pungent at the same time, like fresh-mowed grass.

On the lookout for tripwires, he got over the fence. The first three rows were tomatoes all right, but after that every third plant was tall and jungly. He recognized the five leaflets and the smell of sweet and citrus with just a hint of skunk mixed in. Cannabis. He had stumbled on a pot grow.

Working quickly, Red took one leaf only from each plant, at different heights, some from inside and some on the outer edges, careful not to tear the stems, moving down the rows till he had thirty or more in his backpack. He would've like to take some buds, but maybe it was too early in the season, 'cos there was none that he could see.

In the distance he heard the high whine of a truck in low gear. Red crept out of the enclosure, finding cover in the cut brush. He kept his head down until the engine was shut off, a door slammed and he heard footsteps headed towards him. The vehicle was a Ford pickup with a tarp thrown loose over the back box; the driver seemed to be on his own, a small, heavyset man with a full black beard. He wore blue jeans and ankle boots and smoked a pipe to keep the bugs off, but he waved his hands and slapped his bare skin anyway, cursing and muttering the whole time.

He stayed a half-hour, turning on taps to flood the rows and checking his tomato vines and the tall cannabis plants, stopping every five minutes to relight his pipe. When he'd finished, he went around a second time and turned the taps off. The boy shadowed him, peeking through gaps in the piles of brush and praying the man would not see the sprung trap. But he only seemed interested in getting his crop watered and getting away from the skeeters that swarmed in a circle over his head, waiting for when his pipe would go out. By the time the man headed back to his truck, Red had climbed the tailgate and crawled under the tarp next to a set of weeding tools and a lockbox.

The suspension springs creaked a bit as the man got into the cab, still grumbling, but Red waited, hardly daring to draw breath until the engine was running and they were headed back down the trail. Then he sighed and reached in his backpack for the Coors. It was warm by now, but it tasted just fine.

Stilwell, Adair County, Oklahoma

Professor Fennimore had stayed over at Laney's trailer to supervise the CSIs, while Deputy Hicks sought out Mr Thomas Dawalt, father of Laney. Hicks stood at the gate outside his small clapboard house on the edge of Stilwell, Adair's county seat. Two feet away, a German shepherd dog half choked itself at the end of its chain, snapping and snarling. The steel ring it was attached to was rusted and the concrete it was set in looked like it had taken a lot of wear. She exchanged a look with the Adair sheriff's deputy. He had his hand on his sidearm and she did not doubt that if the dog broke loose he would shoot it dead.