Skunk Hunt (30 page)

"Ick," said Barbara as the possums scurried
into the grass.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Want to turn back?"

"You want me to attach this battery to your
brain and fry your cereal cortex?" she said.

Boy, that was clever, especially considering
the source. I suppose her threat was justified, since I had
questioned her manhood.

We walked past the remains of an old armory
that had blown up way back before civilization, maybe before
horses, maybe before the Dawn of Man. History is what happened
outside my vision, before the Dawn of Mute, and all I see is the
garbage left behind by a zillion generations—which, unfortunately,
includes me and my paltry collection of genes. I heard somewhere
that the armory blew up when a drunk, possibly one of my immediate
ancestors, walked into the middle of the gunpowder-filled warehouse
and lit up a stogie. It must have been a helluva blast, one of
those catastrophes that make you regret all the great shows of
history you'll never see. What remained was a gutted ruin swathed
in vines, a mute marker to mankind's path to ultimate
destruction.

You can see I was in a good mood.

Just before reaching the south fork of the
river we turned uphill, onto the main trail, a loop that was
popular with joggers and birdwatchers. The undergrowth rattled with
critters as we approached the power station. So far as I knew,
there weren't any large animals on the island, if you discounted
larking college students. Raw human nature would have been
titillating at any other time, but Barbara Buzzcock kept me glued
to the program.

In daylight, the old power station could be
accessed from the south fork when the water was low. Countless
toughnecks had clambered up the boulders, entering the bottom story
in search of bare patches of concrete for their graffiti. But this
was too chancy at night. Entering from the island side was not
quite as difficult, and Barbara could stand on the path and shine
the flashlight on the building while I fought my way through the
vines and manmade barrier. I assumed I would have the honor of
risking my neck, or else she could have come by herself.

Nature wasn't the only party making it
difficult to reach the old plant. A wide moat-like ditch ran the
length of the island side. A few days of rain could turn it into a
swamp, but usually it was a drybed littered with garbage that had
spilled over the causeway, interspaced with a holiday set
designer's intensity between trees and thick underbrush. An added
drawback of the low approach was that you needed an extension
ladder to reach the doors and windows overhead. The only reasonable
methodology for anyone idiotic enough to come here at night was
across the culvert that spanned the ditch at the lower end of the
building. Having foreseen the mob of idiots addicted to abandoned
power plants, the city had planted a thick-gauge wire fence on the
culvert, including jagged wings to either side to stop intrepid
souls from hanging onto the wire and swinging to the other side.
The fence bore the scars of innumerable sieges and an almost-equal
number of repairs. It was my job to find the shoddiest bit of
patchwork and force my way through.

I stepped off the path and halfheartedly
walked up to the fence. Even if I managed to breach the fence, I
would have to highwire my way along the culvert, a narrow path
strewn with broken branches. I curled my fingers around the chain
link and gave a shake.

"That's it, can't get through," I said,
squinting into Barbara's light.

"That wasn't much of an effort." She
shifted the light so I could clearly make out the nearest patch of
graffiti, a clever monogram displaying all the language skill of an
aardvark: 'BM SUCKS COCKS'. Barbara continued: "If it's so
impossible, how did
that
get
up there?"

The lettering had a mildly antique patina,
was perhaps a decade old. Oregon Hill had not been so saturated
with students back then, so it was a good chance the author was
part of the local bloodline. Whoever he was writing about was
probably a local, too. I trolled through my childhood address book
and came up with several possibilities: Bunny Mason, Betty Moore,
Belinda Murphy. For any of the three to have been sucking cock,
they must have started at a ridiculously early age, with a very
short period between pacifiers and johns. Barbara, though, had been
a couple of years older....

Of course, it was just the sort of
thing a guy would write if a girl
refused
to suck his cock. And I wouldn't have put
it past Jeremy to slander our sister. It's not something he
wouldn't have said to her face.

Barbara seemed perfectly oblivious to the
graffiti's possibilities. Anyway, sucking cock on Oregon Hill was
so much a part of the indigenous culture as to be unworthy of
comment. I suspect it's no different with today's collegiate crowd,
except they get credit for oral surgery.

In any event, my sister would require a more
convincing effort before she would let me off the hook. I doubted
she would ease off short of my falling and breaking my neck.

"You want to steady that flashlight some?" I
complained. The waffling light, plus my own shadow, made it
difficult to get a clear look at the fence. Barbara was shaking
from the night chill, but she was damned if she would admit she had
come out here inadequately prepared in her tinselly outfit and
stiletto heels. I picked out the more obvious patches in the chain
link, where determined trespassers had plied wire cutters. The gaps
had been welded shut, but some of the repairs looked weak. I tested
an area just above the base of the culvert and after a minute
managed to pull open a foot-wide gap that looked large enough for
entry. Dismayed by my success, I drew back.

"Now what?" Barbara said in exasperation, as
though questioning my brotherly devotion. When I didn't answer
right away, she pointed the light at the building's side door,
propped wide open with all the invitatory glee of a giant
carnivore.

"This thing's kind of narrow," I said,
nodding at the causeway.

"Step on it."

"There's a tree on it," I said.

"Step over it."

"And see those there?" I continued my
complaint, pointing out some low-hanging branches.

"Step through them."

There was my sister's philosophy of life,
with one glaring omission. Step on, step over, step through, but
where was the step out? There was no court in the world that would
convict me if I turned away from this idiotic scene and walked
home. Barbara might claw my eyes out, but that was an optional
sentence, not the death penalty.

"Mute..." Barbara intoned. A single-syllable
nickname was inadequate for seduction, so she drew the 'u' out like
a string of taffy. "You don't want me to live like this all my
life, do you?"

I had never heard of money curing
anyone of being a slut, a fact so apparent I didn't bother bringing
it up. I was disturbed by her come-hither (or, in this case,
go
-hither) tone of voice. I
half-expected her to offer up her cooch right then and there. Sad
to say, in the old days inbreeding was a rather common habit among
Oregon Hillers. Frowned down upon by the rest of society, the
locals went local,
real
local,
which only made us greater subjects of scorn. I hoped Mom wasn't
Dad's sister, but I didn't have any proof either way. The
McPhersons certainly behaved like a clan with suspect begatting,
good Christians that we were. The preachers don't often 'fess up to
Biblical hanky-panky, but genes and Genesis suggest incest on a
massive scale.

Barbara was on automatic, treating me the way
she treated all stupid males, but her sultry tone gave me the
creeps. She didn't realize she was only reinforcing my desire...to
run away.

Several voices came huffing and puffing up
the path. Beams of light stabbed jaggedly in all directions.
Whirling in alarm, Barbara focused her own beam on a passel of
joggers wearing LED headlamps, looking for all the world like a
derailing passenger train as they pumped their legs up the slope.
They were on us in a moment, a herd dolled up in polyester and
Velcro. I crouched next to the fence, terrified by the possibility
that these were plainclothesmen who would whip out guns from their
sagging waist pouches and spreadeagle us on the ground. If nothing
else, they could stick us with trespassing after dark.

The joggers weren't cops, but fellow
scofflaws who were just as abashed as we were to be caught on the
island post-sunset. The best defense for both parties was to
pretend the other wasn't there. The joggers steamed past us, their
huffing subdued. Once they were gone, Barbara let out a long
breath.

"
Now
will you get the lead out of your ass?" she said. The irate
sister had kicked out the vamp. "I don't want to have to sic Dog on
you."

A threat that, if carried out, would leave
her as broke as she had begun. She was right, though. One way or
the other, I had to make up my mind. An unfamiliar ache coursed
through my mental subprocesses: curiosity. Whoever was playing mind
games with us knew the McPherson tonic scale down to the last note.
What the hell lay hidden in the power station? With Barbara goading
me on, I was suddenly humming with a passion to know.

The old Oregon Hillers had had a phrase for
the poor craftsmanship used in repairing the chain link fence (and
of which they were past masters), but I won't bother to repeat it
here. I found it easy to slip through the gap. Once I was out on
the culvert, though, I had second thoughts and began to turn back.
A hiss from my sister turned me around again and I began creeping
my way along the narrow pathway. It would have been a snap for a
more limber and self-confident explorer. For me, it was a dance in
the dark—and it might as well have been dark, what with Barbara
dancing the light all over the place, squeezing shadows out of
every lump and bump in my path, making it look like smudged carbon
and giving me only the vaguest clue of what lay ahead.

First up, the aforementioned tree that had
sprawled itself in a menacing barricade across the culvert. There
was no question of springing over, not for me. I sat on it and
swung my leg over, the bark giving my crotch a vigorous scrubbing
before I managed to hitch myself onto my feet on the other side. I
immediately found myself in a thick network of vines and branches
from the treetops growing out of the ditch to either side of the
culvert. I thought of the malevolent trees in The Wizard of Oz,
except in this case the only witch in the vicinity was my
mental-case sister, who could cast spells without an ounce of
magic. I pushed and tugged cautiously at the tangled mess,
mistaking more than one thick vine for a snake and nearly falling
off in alarm. But I knew from the open door ahead that others had
made it through before me, and that, theoretically, this was not an
impossible task.

Teetering past the final limb, I came out on
the building ledge and let out a sigh of relief. My shadow loomed
on the wall, impressing me with its bulk, Charlie Atlas unchained.
I leaned sideways to allow Barbara's light through the door, and
immediately saw a sleeping bag lying like a dark shaggy dog on the
floor. I leaned forward, trying to see if anyone was in it.
Abandoned sleeping bags were fairly common along the river, the
homeless being real slackers when it comes to toting their gear.
When I entered, my body again blocked the light, so I nudged my
foot ahead until I came on a soft resistance. I gave the sleeping
bag a gentle kick and found no one inside. That was a break. It was
also a warning that its owner might return for some ill-deserved
shuteye.

I hate being hurried, and everything tonight
was a rush. Rushed sex, a rush to the island, now a rush to find
the treasure before Carl and Dog showed up. Barbara seemed to think
they would wait until daylight to search the station, but who was
to say they weren't as dumb as we were? Encountering Dog in the
dark was about as cozy a prospect as stepping on a land mine.

I had not brought the flashlight with
me out of fear of dropping it in the broad swampy ditch, where it
would have been pretty much irretrievable. Barbara tried to follow
my progress, shining the light through the gaping windows as I
traversed the building, but it was a piss poor substitute for
having light at hand. And once I circled to the other side of the
building, I was stuck with whatever the Moon offered from the river
side. It didn't help that the place was full of junk. I couldn't go
three feet without stubbing my toes on old fragments of ductwork,
lathing and various other bits of industrial strength garbage. From
the smell of the place, there were personal leftovers as well,
uneaten food and human waste under a layer of ejaculatory
overspill. All my slipping and sliding suggested it was a
thick
layer, too, with tasty bits of
prophylactic latex thickening the gumbo. I promised myself I would
strangle our unknown guide if I ever got the chance to put my hands
around his neck—and if he wasn't too imposing.

In my book, self-annihilation is not the apex
of manhood. Sing me no songs of virile angst or raincoat rebellion.
I see no virtue in suicidal behavior just because my life is in a
permanent slump. I know, that's only me, but at the moment I felt
it was hazardous just breathing in the air of the old power plant,
which reeked of asbestos in addition to the biological components.
You don't miss much in life if life is your primary objective, and
every slippery step I took reminded me I was risking the one thing
that mattered most to me. It was sort of late to raise the white
flag, but as I looked out one of the southward facing windows I
reviewed the option of trying to scramble my way to the moonlit
boulders in the river below. It was a damn sight trickier than the
ditch crossing, but it opened the bright possibility of dodging my
sister's wrath. On the other hand, she knew the way to my front
door, and I wasn't ready to abandon my house.