Skunk Hunt (32 page)

"
Two
of them are," the old fart answered, backing away from the
table. "It's not real."

"But these were taken over twenty years ago."
Barbara fanned out the half-dozen photos from the cash box. There
was no question about the identity. Even as a child, Jeremy had
worn a permanent smirk that invited a punch in the mouth for anyone
daring enough to attempt it. We were confronted with dual smirks,
unpleasantly crumpled half-moons cratered by dimples at either end.
You just knew these kids had something up their sleeves, even if
they were too dumb to know it. Barbara continued: "I don't think
they had anything but real pictures back then."

"You don't know much about the truth, do you,
Sweet Tooth?" Flint pumped his arm, as though drawing down a
viewing screen. "They've been faking pictures since Instamatic. All
those UFO's and Big Foot. That Vietnam photo of that girl running
naked down the street? She was laughing, and they made it
tears."

"Uhmmm," Barbara said doubtfully.

"All those pictures of Neil Armstrong on the
Moon?" I said, pushing a joke without expecting a response.

"Fake," Flint asserted.

Barbara shot me a look. Our antique
neighbor believed nothing unless he saw it first-hand, with his own
eyes. By this criteria, 99% of the evidence for our shared history
and continued existence was bogus. Like most philosophical
platforms, it was perfectly useless. But in this case it was
possible. Even I knew scanning and doctoring old pictures was
commonplace. The question was
why
someone would go to all the trouble to make twins out of
Jeremy?

Flint did not know that, besides the
pictures, the cash box had been spiced with $20,000. Our benefactor
was whetting our appetites, giving us plenty of incentive to
continue the hunt. At the moment the money was resting in Barbara's
handbag. We told Flint we had found the pictures in my house. Did
the McPherson clan have a secret history?

"Every family has secrets," the old vet
continued. "But not secrets like this. Back when you were kids,
everyone knew everyone on Oregon Hill. We would've known if there
were two Jeremys."

He had a hard time matching his words to his
wrinkles. He said he was doubtful, but the crosshatch of his face
twisted not just with surprise, but awareness.

"That's not true," I said. "No one around
here knew about your mother, right?"

"What are you thinking?" Barbara chimed in,
catching the same division between what he said and what he
knew.

"Nothing," said the Vietnam vet.

I had no doubt that Flint Dementis was the
original blank slate, but right now it was obvious something had
been scribbled across his mind.

It had been an unnerving night, the final
nerve unstrung when the voice in the hydroelectric station went
inexplicably silent and darkness blocked my path. I spent a few
moments listening to my echo as I pleaded with the man to turn the
spots back on.

I had entered the plant in the dark, and I
would leave in the dark, once my eyes grew accustomed to it again.
Splashing my way through the slime, I worked my way to the back of
the upper story, facing the island and Barbara's frantically waving
light. I spent several minutes scraping my shoe against the
doorframe before venturing out onto the narrow culvert. It was a
dangerous enough prospect without skating on a thick layer of
genomic ooze. The whole way Barbara filled the air with hushed
warnings and threatening hisses. She had caught a glimpse of the
arc halo at the back of the plant and couldn't hold her water to
find out what had happened. The box drew me off balance. Between
that and Barbara's frantic hoopla I nearly fell into the canal.

Once across, I had to deal with my sister
clawing at me and the box for a look inside. She gaped at the
pictures of duplicate Jeremys, beamed at the wad of cash, and
frowned with concern at the papers, neatly bound in a stiff
powder-blue cover.

"It's a deed," I said, lifting the edge and
glancing at the first page.

"Yeah?" said Barbara, stuffing the money in
her purse.

There were several ways off the island, but
at night there were only two neck-safe options: the way we had
come, and the short maintenance bridge leading to Southside. The
problem being, once we were off Belle Isle, where could we go? We
had to assume my house was being watched, so we couldn't go to
Barbara's car, which was parked out front. There was only one other
place within reasonable walking distance where we could go to study
our find.

Barbara wasn't too keen on my plan, which was
to return to the north shore, follow the mountain bike trail to
Hollywood Cemetery, and come up on Pine Street and Flint's
house—all in the dark. But when I suggested Carl and Dog might be
waiting for us at my house, she gulped down the bullet. She knew it
was a real possibility because she was the one who had stupidly
brought them into the game.

We crossed the footbridge and found our
way to the bike trail, following it until we came to a huge gap
that had been torn through the chain link fence separating the
trail from the cemetery. Since discreet entrances are
de rigour
with trespassers, I assumed
it was the graveyard groundskeepers, and not kids, who had rammed a
bulldozer through the fence near the river. It's SOP for hands-on
folks to tear down inconvenient theoretical constructs, and the
fence had proved an impractical barrier to removing excess earth.
After leaving the trail, Barbara and I clambered over a few large
mounds and found ourselves in the midst of a host of defunct
Confederate notables, among others. We had no sooner passed our
first grave when my sister got the shakes.

"This isn't a place for people with weight on
their brains," she said.

I had strong doubts about any accumulation of
weighty matter in her head, and she probably wasn't referring to
cerebral wrecking balls caroming off her brain stem. She had
twisted her guilt into a knotty conundrum. It used to be that if
you screwed around beyond reason you were by definition 'bad'. No
question about it. We're probably just dodging the issue by raising
a troubled conscience to the platform of valid options. Really, we
all suck, and we know it. And for some people the moment of truth
comes when they confront the dead.

"They're not watching," I said, nodding at a
cluster of headstones showing dimly in the moonlight. Stumpy
ghosts, more like kids getting ready to yell 'trick or treat!' than
the slated dead.

"You don't know," Barbara hissed lowly.

I shifted the box to my left hand and held
out my right to help guide her past Joe Blown. She didn't see my
hand or the tombstone and banged her knee painfully.

"Ouch! See? They're getting back at me."

"What crap," I answered. "They don't punish
you for your sins."

"They punish you for having too much fun,"
Barbara said, rubbing her shin vigorously. "Oh, there'll be a
bruise."

"Not the first," I said, figuring the remark
would fly over her head. My misjudgment was rewarded with a stiff
jab. "Anyway," I continued, trying to rub my arm in spite of the
box, "to this crowd just being alive is fun. I mean, if there were
any active brains around, of which I see only one."

"Don't you think anyone or anything sees what
we're really like?" Barbara was going little-girl on me, complete
with a trepidation-filled squeaky voice.

"What, that we're the walking dead?"

"I mean our souls, Mute. If nothing sees into
our souls, it's like we never existed. Something has to write down
what we were while we were here."

"In a graveyard?" I said.

"On earth."

"Well..." I speculated as I shifted past an
angel wielding a sword, granite with a vengeance. "You can't count
God out, I guess."

"You can if you don't believe in him."

"Okay," I admitted with easy secularity. "But
then you're left with an all-seeing body scan that X-rays your
soul. Do you prefer that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about,"
Barbara shivered. I didn't offer any mental demerits. I didn't know
what I was talking about, either. She continued: "These people know
about life and death. They learned what counts for and against you
in the..."

"Hereafter?"

"Yeah."

'These people.' She was acting as if we were
in a coliseum chock-full of rabid preachers. 'These people' in the
not-so-sweet hereafter had not gotten the one thing they most
wanted in life, which was not to die, and that had somehow made
them masters of theological speculation. And judges. I wanted to
shrug off the idea and focus on getting through Hollywood Cemetery
without adding my bones to the skeleton crew. This place was
haunted, all right. A million chuckholes threatened our ankles,
headstones ranging in size from notepads to small airplanes leaned
threateningly in our direction, tree branches and bushes snagged
and unthreaded our clothes and skin, and a fair number of feral
something-or-others darted across our path, bearing fear and malice
in equal portions and armed to the teeth with teeth. Nice chewy
humans, yum.

Barbara seemed intent on adding angst to our
impediments. She made little mewing sounds, inarticulate pleas for
forgiveness. Then she began to mumble. After a minute of this I
began to make out a word here and there and realized she was
reciting her crimes and misdemeanors. I listened with growing
disbelief, until she said something that hauled me down in my
tracks.

"You did
what
?"

"I enjoyed my misery too much," she
responded.

"I mean, what was it you just said
about...did you say something about stuffed rubbers?"

I sensed a wave of sheepishness flowing out
of the dark from her direction. Maybe she was mistaking me for one
of the all-seeing dearly departed.

"I'm not a hooker," she said.

"Sure."

"But sometimes...you know...when I'm in a
bind..."

"You conduct a mutually satisfying financial
transaction," I prompted.

"I guess you could say that."

"I
am
saying it."

"Well, there's this one guy who wraps his
yinyang in hundred dollar bills and stuffs it all in a rubber
before—"

"I'm getting the picture," I said through a
wave of nausea. "And you get a kick out of that?"

"It's fantastic!" she shouted, belching with
laughter which she quickly throttled when she remembered where we
were. "Sorry," she whispered to the dead, like a comic who had
dropped his punchline in front of a tough crowd.

I tried not to picture Barbara unrolling
gooey C-notes from a used rubber. "Are you finished with your
confession?" I asked warily.

"No," she said, then paused, thinking it
over. "Yes."

We found the road leading up to the main
entrance and began walking uphill.

"Isn't the gate locked shut after dark?"
Barbara said.

"There's more than one way to skin a cat," I
said—upon which, a psychically-inclined black cat crossed our path.
"Shit."

"But you aren't superstitious," my sister
reminded me.

We turned off the access road and clawed our
way up the steep hill leading to Cherry Street. It didn't take us
long to find one of the semi-permanent gaps under the fence, and
within minutes we were knocking on Flint's door. His greeting was
less than enthusiastic.

"It's wrestling night," he complained,
nodding at the black and white television that he had pulled out of
the dump.

We poured out the contents of the cash box—or
what was left after Barbara had removed the money—onto the kitchen
table, a jumble of legal documents, photographs and handwritten
notes. Flint spent his focus on the pictures of the two Jeremys,
repeating several times his assertion that they were doctored.

"You can't believe what you see, anymore," he
sighed, turning a baleful eye on me as though I was the forgery in
question.

Dear Reader, insert asterisk here.

"Where's your mother?" Barbara asked.

"I put her in her cage and covered it with a
blanket," he said.

Meaning she didn't peep once the lights were
out, or so I hoped. I lifted the powder blue bundle out of the pile
and untied the string. Unfolding it, I found several typed
pages.

"I think it's a will," I said.

"Is it full of 'bequeaths' and 'bestowed'?"
Flint asked.

My eyes drifted over the legalese on the
first page. "Here's a 'bequeath'."

"Then it's a will." Flint hesitated as
he reconsidered and reconfirmed. "Well it don't
look
like a Bible."

"I don't see any 'begats'," I confirmed.

"A will from Dad?" Barbara said. Not 'Skunk'.
The prospect of inheriting property made her respectful. I was
surprised she didn't say 'from our dear father?'

"Some other rat's ass," Flint negated,
squinting at the 12-point font.

I lifted my eyes to the top of the document.
The old man was right. This will was composed for a complete
stranger, for the benefit of complete strangers.

Last Will & Testament of Benjamin F.
Neerson

I, Benjamin F. Neerson, of 20011 Ferncrest
Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, declare that this is my Last Will and
Testament.

Article 1 - Preliminary Declarations

I am married to Elizabeth J. Neerson and all
references in this Will to my spouse refer to Elizabeth J.
Neerson.

I have living children. All references in
this Will to my "child" or "children" or "issue" include existing
children and any child or children hereafter born to or adopted by
me.

Like I said, complete strangers. I kept
reading because that's what you do when you come across someone's
personal Pentagon Papers. And it was a clue, for chrissakes.