Skunk Hunt (20 page)

But at least the miserable acreage wasn't
dangerous—if you excluded snakes and poisonous insect hordes
lurking in the grass. The two-story house had all the earmarks of a
man-trap: the porch boards were rotted and its roof slanted like
some old geezer tipping his stovepipe. We could see holes in the
clapboard siding—in fact, here and there, you could see right
through to the feathery caps of broomsedge in the back yard.
Risking the first couple of porch steps, I studied the front rooms
and saw no sign of itinerant hygiene. Even the homeless had done a
thumbs-down on this dump. In the transition between home-boys and
college clowns, Oregon Hill had been substantially depopulated. I
had grown familiar with the sight of abandoned houses and the waste
products of trespassing derelicts, who did not shun using old
living rooms as crappers.

"Why'd you stop?" Jeremy asked me.

"Why don't you follow?" I said.

"You're lighter," my brother answered with an
indifferent shrug, as though the topic held no interest for
him.

I looked at Barbara. "You're even
lighter."

"Hey, you're a guy," she said, taking a step
back.

Women's Lib came to a clunkering halt in the
McPherson household way back, before we were born. Awareness has to
begin before it begins, if you know what I mean. You don't know
what I mean? Try this, then: to fill a glass you have start with a
few drops. To siphon gas out of a car's reservoir you have to start
sucking. To begin anything you have to begin. Still not making
sense? You have to meet me halfway. Well, three quarters of the
way....

About the only fads that stuck with my
family were low-sodium ham and lite (
sic
) beer, because there was nothing else
available at the Fine Food Mart down the street. Our collective
sense of social relativity wouldn't fill a thimble. Maybe it's a
holdover from the Civil War. The only way to raise consciousness in
the South was to hold a gun to its head. And pull the
trigger.

Barbara gave me her best 'unmanning' look,
the surgical expression designed to lop off the male penis and
display it in a dainty floral arrangement, pretty, useless and
pretty useless. Any guy reluctant to suck in his gut for The
Cause—any cause that required the useless splurge of
testosterone—was a nonentity in her book. Awfully intolerant for
someone suffering from helicopters. My only consolation was that
this attitude probably caused her untold grief. I wondered if she
sported contusions inflicted by testosterone-laden boyfriends under
all that makeup.

Jeremy's macho image was not under threat.
Excluding his reaction to the sniper, he was royally endowed with
pointless manliness. He was just showing me up—a very manly
pastime.

"Go on, Mute," he said

Judging from a pair of uneven rents, one of
my predecessors had fallen through the rotting floorboards. It was
impossible to say if they were recent. Avoiding the jagged
fissures, I timidly tiptoed ahead. Every step I took wrenched an
arthritic protest from the joists, and I could actually see the
ledger board wobble like a level held by a drunk. The entire
edifice might come crashing down on my stupid head at any moment.
Not only would that have served me right, but it might have been an
improvement.

But the porch held. Astonishment and
gratitude escorted me through the gaping door.

There was an antiseptic air about the place,
as though it had not only been bleached by age, but the heavy hand
of industry. I disturbed no roosting birds. No lurking possums
jumped out of the corners. Even vermin had no desire to live here.
It should have been the perfect spot to hide stolen loot, but the
total emptiness bothered me.

"Someone's been here," I shouted to the
chickenshits outside.

"I hope so!" Jeremy shouted back.

"I mean someone's cleaned this place
up. The floor's been
swept
!"

"So the owner's planning to sell." Jeremy's
voice sounded louder. I turned and saw that he had advanced to the
top of the porch. His brand of moral support put the remote in
control.

"I didn't see a For Sale sign," I
groused. I didn't realize until that moment that I preferred my
abandoned houses to be unowned as well as unoccupied. We were
adding breaking and entering—well,
entering
—to our list of crimes. And we
had
been committing crimes. Every
time we followed up on a clue without advising the authorities we
were crossing the line. We were accessories after the fact, and our
only defense (if we were caught) was that we fully intended to
return the Brinks money to its rightful owners. Which, needless to
say, was not part of our plan.

Treading carefully, I mapped out a mental
schematic. There were four rooms downstairs: living room, kitchen,
parlor and bedroom. At least that was what I imagined the rooms to
be, although the only thing certain was the kitchen, because of the
sink.

If the owner planned to sell, he should have
focused on the sagging woodwork. The walls were wormy, lathing was
exposed everywhere, and shaggy tufts of insulation hung from the
ceiling. That in itself was a curiosity. There should have been
debris on the floor.

Hollow tippy-toe footsteps sounded from the
front. Jeremy had entered the house and was following my footsteps.
So much for discovering the money and skipping out the back
door.

"Boogy-boogy-boogy," my moronic brother
intoned, making the most of the ghostly echo. "Find anything yet?
Anything green?"

"You mean like your rotting brain?" I
said.

Jeremy came around to the foot of the
stairwell, where I was standing doubtfully.

"Well?" he said.

"I haven't seen anything," I confessed. "But
that doesn't mean we can't start pulling up floorboards." I glanced
down. "It shouldn't be too hard. I think Lee slept here after
Appomattox." I looked again. "Or maybe Light-Horse Harry Lee
after—"

"Upstairs, then," Jeremy cut me short.

"Those stairs look ready to snap," I pointed
out.

"Yeah, they sure do. You lead the way."

"Why not you?" I said.

"Because I've got 30 pounds on you, bro'." He
flexed a muscle to show he meant brawn, not blah. I imaged him
bench-pressing in the prison gym and immediately saw the better
part of valor lay up the flight of rickety steps.

The first step rasped resoundingly, like an
empire on the verge of collapse. I shot Jeremy a look, as though to
ask if he really wanted me to commit suicide.

He nodded. He did. Jeremy McPherson, my
rancid brother.

"Okay, Adolf," I said.

"What?" he said.

I took the second step—and my luck held. It
held because the wood cracked, my foot went through, and I slammed
my jaw on the stairs as I fell. It held because...well, it could
have happened higher up.

"There's no need for that."

I thought at first my brain had been souffléd
and Jeremy's words were taking sharp turns through my scrambled
synapses. He would not have given up. He would have hoisted me by
the scruff and sent me onwards until I reached the top or broke my
neck trying. The only explanation for him telling me to back away
was cerebral impairment. I was delusional.

I dragged my foot out of the hole and
staggered back, rubbing my chin. I tested my injury by speaking.
"You didn't say what I thought you just said, did you?"

"I didn't say anything," said Jeremy.

Hearing the tremble in his voice, I turned
his way. He had gone bug-eyed, gaping this way and that.

"If you didn't say it—" I began.

"
I
said it," came a voice.

"Ah!" Jeremy shouted, whirling in a
circle.

He could say that again. The voice had come
from nowhere, or everywhere—the acoustics of an empty house could
be tricky, especially when there was no one in sight.

"Don't ask him where he is," I told
Jeremy.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"He might tell you," I said.

Jeremy thought this over and went into 'or
else what?' mode.

"Where are you?"

Instead of answering, the voice said, "Where
is Ms. McPherson?"

Jeremy and I exchanged glances. Seeing no
answers, we exchanged glances again.

"She's—"

"Here," came a timorous voice from the
parlor. And then Barbara said, "Either of you guys see a bathroom
around here?"

"Is that you, Ms. McPherson?" said the voice.
"Can you come around to the stairway so I can see you?"

"I can't see you to see me," said Barbara,
poking her head around the corner. Sometimes I couldn't help but
admire her logic.

"Indulge me," said the voice. "Stand by your
brothers."

Barbara pulled away from the wall, but did
not come closer. Her eyes were skeet-shooting all over the place. I
knew how she felt, but hoped I was handling my abject terror with a
bit more decorum.

"That's almost like Skunk's voice," Barbara
whispered.

My God, I thought. Skunk had always talked
like someone munching on raw celery. The voice we were hearing was
similar, but with an electronic tinge.

On the other hand, Skunk would never have
referred to Barbara as 'Ms. McPherson.'

"I want to see Sweet Tooth," said the
voice.

"Oh..." Barbara shrank back.

"You can see her when we can see you," said
Jeremy, coming to the conclusion that the voice might be bodiless
and spooky, but was essentially comprised of hot air.

"Very well," said the voice. "Mute...raise
your eyes and look a little to the right."

I followed the speaker's instructions. And
there, tucked in the lathing like a raccoon staring down hi-beams,
was a little red light, flashing. I pointed and Jeremy turned.

"Well I'll be—" he began.

"I'm sure you are," said the voice.

"What is it?" Barbara asked breathlessly.

"A fucking camera," said Jeremy.

"Of which I'm sure you saw many in prison,"
the voice said smugly.

"What's the radius of your signal?" asked
Jeremy.

"Why do you want to know?" said the
voice.

"So I know how far I have to reach to whack
you." Jeremy held up a balled fist.

"Will that be before or after I tell you
where the money is?" said the voice.

Jeremy lowered his hand. "Uh...if you're
doing this for our benefit, why hide?"

"Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you
just glad to see me?" said the voice.

I received a hard punch in the shoulder for
laughing.

The voice continued: "I thought you might
come armed, and I wanted to avoid any unfortunate accidents. Might
I add that tucking the gun in your belt that way could lead to
drastic surgery."

Jeremy wasn't going to admit the gun was
loaded with blanks, thus opening him to the charge of idiocy. An
unnecessary precaution, in my opinion, seeing as it was
self-evident.

I glanced at Barbara, whose dread clung like
Saran Wrap over her face, stretching her skin at odd angles. "Don't
worry, it's not Skunk."

"How do you know?" she asked.

"Did you ever hear him talk like this?" I
said.

"He never came back from the dead, either,"
she said, but slowly inched into the camera's viewing field.

"Ah, Sweet Tooth," said the voice,
pleased.

"You're really not Skunk?" Barbara asked in a
small voice, a child inquiring about monsters in the closet. Her
father being the monster, which I suppose isn't all that
unusual.

"No," said the voice. "I'm not your father,
nor anything like him."

"You say the money's here?" Jeremy stepped
forward, hogging the lens.

"A portion of it," said the voice. "Would you
mind moving back a little so I can see your brother and sister?
This is the only way I have of ensuring all of you get your share.
Unfortunately, I have no way of preventing one of you from trying
to steal from the others..."

I sensed the electronic eye focusing on
Jeremy.

Jeremy gave a small laugh and stood between
Barbara and me, wrapping his arms around us and giving a big grin,
as though posing for a group portrait. "One big happy."

"That's very reassuring," said the voice
doubtfully. "Now please, be patient. I went to a lot of trouble to
set this up. I even had to clean out the house because the dust
kept triggering the motion detectors."

"Motion detectors?" Jeremy stuttered.

"Is Skunk...alive, sort of?" asked Barbara,
unconvinced. She elbowed Jeremy away from her.

"If you qualify it that way, I would have to
say yes," said the voice.

"But how—" I began.

Jeremy emptied his other arm by shoving me
away. "So the money's here? Or part of it? Where's the rest? Or is
that your...your..."

"Commission," I offered.

"There is no commission involved," said the
voice, somewhat offended by the suggestion. "But you'll be more
than pleased to know that—"

The voice broke off.

"Hey!" said Jeremy, charging forward. "Don't
go away like that!"

"One moment," said the voice.

"One moment my ass!" Jeremy could not hide
his panic. He reached up in an attempt to wrench the camera out of
its hiding place. "One word, that's all! Just tell us where! One
word!"

Barbara and I watched Jeremy with a vague,
mutual disgust that was not entirely directed at him. This is what
we were, if you stripped off the facade. We could be hopping up and
down with juvenile greed, and I suspect only the futility of the
gesture stopped us from joining in. There and then I was tempted to
drop the hunt, even though we were on the verge of finding the
money. I've seen people on talk shows looking even more stupid,
programs I skipped out of embarrassment for the participants. Did I
really want to be one of them? There was a good chance the owner of
the voice was taping us at this moment. Imagine Jeremy on the air,
his squawking repeated again and again on prime time.