Bill Pronzini - Shackles

The dog built even more edginess in me. I can get along with most dogs but I’ve had run-ins with this variety before. My hands were down flat against my sides and I could feel the hard outline of the.22 against my right wrist; but that wasn’t the way to deal with this guy or his dog, or anybody else if I could help it, except one man. I lifted my arms away from my body, put my eyes on the guy in the driver’s seat and kept them there, hoping the tension didn’t show.

“Morning. Thanks for-” The words came out in a rusty croak, and I had to break off and clear my throat before I could go on. How long since I had last used my voice? “Thanks for stopping.”

He didn’t acknowledge that. He said, “Problem?”

“You can say that again.”

“I didn’t see your car along the road.”

“That’s because I haven’t got it anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s like this. My name’s Canino, Art Canino,” I lied. “My wife and I been staying at the Carders’ place… Tom and Elsie, you know them?”

“No.”

“Well, they weren’t using it this time of year so they let us come up for a few days. We been having trouble, the wife and me, marriage trouble… you know how it is. So I suggested we get away, off by ourselves, try to work things out. Stupidest goddamn idea I ever had.”

“That so?”

“All we did was fight. All we ever do these days is fight. Last night we had a hell of a row and when I went to the can she took the keys and drove off with the fugging car.”

“You mean she never came back?”

“That’s what I mean. Stranded me up here, no phone in the cabin, no transportation out. Can you believe a woman who’d do a thing like that?”

He thought about it and decided he could. I watched his face relax, a tight little smile form on his mouth. He’d also decided to be amused. I was good for his ego, I was; he could feel superior to a poor schmuck like me. Some people are like that, the macho types in particular: They need the misfortune of others to make them feel good about themselves.

“My wife ever did something like that,” this asshole said, “I’d break a few of her teeth for her.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m through with mine-this is the last straw. Soon as I get back to Stockton, I’m hiring a lawyer to file for divorce.”

“That where you’re from? Stockton?”

“Now it is. Moved there five months ago, from up north. Eureka. Hell, I don’t even know anybody well enough I can call to come pick me up. How am I going to get home?”

“Don’t look at me,” the guy said.

“No, no. But there must be a bus or something… what’s the nearest town I could catch a bus to Stockton?”

He shrugged, smiling his smug little smile. “I never been on a bus in my life.”

“Sonora? Maybe I could get one in Sonora.”

“Maybe.”

“That’s not too far from here, is it?”

“Far enough.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going anywhere near there…?”

“Not me. Deer Run’s as far as I’m going.”

Deer Run. That was a wide place on a secondary mountain road ten miles or so north of Murphys; I’d passed through it once, a long time ago, and I remembered a handful of buildings-hardly enough to justify the place being called a hamlet, much less a town. It was where I’d estimated my location, and maybe thirty miles from Sonora.

I said, “I’d be glad to pay you if you’d take me as far as Sonora.”

“Yeah? How much?” But he wasn’t really interested; I could tell by the tone of his voice.

“Forty dollars?”

“Nah. I got things to do this morning.”

“Fifty.”

“Can’t do it, pal,” he said, and paused, and then said, “Could be Mary Alice’d know somebody who will.”

“Mary Alice?”

“She runs the store in Deer Run.”

“That where you’re going, her store?”

“Among other places.”

“Well, would you mind giving me a lift there? I’d appreciate it; I’m tired of walking.”

I put a pleading note in my voice, hating myself for doing it, and it made him laugh. He said, “Sure, why not? I won’t even charge you nothing.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“Come on, get in.”

I went on the passenger side, opened the door. He must have said something to the dog; it was sitting all the way back on the rear seat, not drawn up but not relaxed either, watching me with those hard yellow eyes. I could feel the eyes on me as I slid inside and they made my skin crawl, ran the edginess right down into my hands so that I had to clasp them together in my lap to keep them from shaking.

“Dog make you nervous, pal?”

“Well… a little.”

“Makes a lot of people nervous,” the asshole said meaningfully, but with the amusement still in his voice. “That’s because he’s attack-trained. Never know what kind of trouble you’ll run into these days, even way up here.”

“No. No, you sure don’t.”

Neither of us had anything else to say on the drive into Deer Run. It wasn’t much of a drive-less than ten minutes and no more than a mile. The hamlet lay tucked up in a hollow surrounded by timbered hillocks, maybe a dozen buildings, and half a hundred junked cars and trucks poking up out of the snow. It had a primitive aspect, as if the past fifty years or so had passed it by. Only three of the buildings were business establishments: a general store and post office, a service station, and an out-of-business, boarded-up “antique” store. Those three buildings were located just beyond where the road we were on intersected with another county road. That one must have been the through road to Murphys in one direction, to Highway 49 and San Andreas in the other: It had been cleared by a snowplow crew that was working now at one end of the hollow-two big snowblowers and half a dozen yellow-clad men-and it ran like a snaky black vein through all the sunlight white.

There was a road sign at the intersection, and when the guy braked there I had a quick look at the wooden arrow pointing back up the way we’d come. It read: Indian Hill Road. Okay. Now I knew exactly where my former prison was situated.

We pulled over into a cleared area in front of the store. It was a weathered building made of clapboard and corrugated iron siding, with pitched roof lines to prevent snow from piling up on top. It didn’t have a name, or if it did there was no sign announcing it that I could see. We got out, all three of us, and the guy let the dog nuzzle around my legs as we tramped inside. He liked what it did to me; he laughed in my face, a barking sound like the German shepherd might have made. I thought; Easy, easy, he’s not important, none of this is important , to keep myself from doing something foolish, like knocking the laugh back down his throat.

The interior of the store looked and smelled like country groceries everywhere: weak lighting, closely set aisles, rough-hewn floor; mingled odors of damp and dust, brewing coffee, refrigerated meats and overripe cheese and stale bread. A woman sat behind a long counter area, half of it a meat and deli case and the other half a checkout counter, along the right-hand wall. She was in her sixties, grossly fat and encased in a bulging dress much too small for her. A cigarette in a black holder slanted from one corner of her mouth.

The guy said, “Mary Alice, who you think I got here?”

She gave me an impersonal glance, the kind you’d give a side of beef to see how much fat there was on it. “Never saw him before.”

“His name’s Canino, been staying at one of the cabins up on Indian Hill. His wife run off with his car last night and stranded him.”

“Stranded him, eh?”

“Can you beat that?”