Randy White - Deceived

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Going door-to-door, I spoke to Mrs. Morgan and the House sisters, then tried the dilapidated cabin where old Captain Elmer Joiner was mending nets beneath a tree. The results were the same. My old neighbors were happy to see me, happy to discuss the weather and Mrs. Helms’s funeral or to inquire about Loretta’s health, but when I mentioned Fisherfolk, our friendships vaporized, then a wary chill followed me out the door. Same when I asked for the name of the person who had approached them about donating, and even when I said, “I think you and my mother are being robbed!”

Didn’t matter. Their behavior was more than just strange, it was revealing. People who donate to a good cause are usually happy to discuss their generosity, so the few responses I did get hinted at a larger truth, a truth my old neighbors refused to share.

“What’s the difference between paying taxes and robbery?” Mrs. Padilla, a widow, asked me. She had always been a spirited woman but sounded nervous, not angry, when I suggested that she was being cheated. Prior to knocking on her door, it had been my secret hope that Mrs. Padilla might also be willing to gossip about my mother’s secret lover-she and Loretta had never gotten along-but I gave up when she told me, “Just because I played organ at your recital doesn’t give you the right to nose into my affairs!”

Which was true, I had to admit it. But I couldn’t resist asking Mrs. Padilla why she, a woman on Social Security, was worried about taxes. Loretta had mentioned taxes, too, which was consistent, at least, and hinted that the benefits of donating to Fisherfolk had been misrepresented.

Mrs. Padilla’s response was more of a threat than an explanation. “Around here, Hannah, you pry open the wrong box, something might jump out and bite you.” Then asked, “You’re goin’ to Pinky’s funeral, aren’t you?” saying it as if there was a connection.

I replied, “Thursday afternoon, of course. Are you telling me Mrs. Helms was murdered?”

The woman shrugged, but there was a knowing look on her face as if she had made her point. End of conversation. End of my visit to the cottages of Munchkinville.

As I returned to my SUV, Captain Joiner looked up from his mending long enough to wave, but he didn’t smile.

Mica Helms’s “home address” turned out to be a junkyard in Glades City, which I thought was an intentional error until I saw the dog. It was a brindle-yellow pit bull, the same alpha female that had attacked me Friday, minus her pack mate whose head had been found in a freezer.

By the time I saw the dog, it was too late.

I had parked and walked to the fence, which was chain-link, eight feet high, with razor wire at the top. Inside, among rows of wrecked cars, was a trailer that looked lived in, but a sign on the door read Office . There was also a gravel path that seemed to invite business. I tried hollering to get attention but a machine-a wood shredder, it sounded like-made so much noise, I couldn’t hear my own voice. The noise came at me in waves and was piercing, so I covered my ears as I walked to the gate. It was a sliding gate, not open but slightly ajar. I looked around and tried hollering again. Pointless. There was a Keep Out sign, but no warnings about a dog, so I slipped through the gate and walked toward the trailer.

Midway between the door and the fence, someone switched off the shredder, creating an explosion of silence that was so abrupt, I actually stopped and blinked my eyes. That’s when I heard a softer sound, a warning familiar from my nightmare, the low rumble of a dog.

I turned. The female pit bull appeared from behind a stack of tires, her dark eyes black in the afternoon sunlight. Because of the shredding machine, she was momentarily surprised to see a trespasser only a few yards from where she’d been dozing. The dog stiffened, as if in recognition, and bared her teeth, while her body hunkered lower for traction. I was already backing away when she roared at me and charged.

Attached to the pit bull’s collar was a galvanized chain. But how long? Was the chain anchored? The questions were displaced by panic. I turned and ran. The shock waves of the dog’s barking hammered at my ankles and pushed me faster. Then pushed me high into the air. Before I could understand what had happened, I was crouched on the hood of a car, my eyes affixed to the eyes of the pit bull as she hurled herself at me, her teeth inches from my face.

I threw up an arm and dived toward the roof of the car. When I looked, the dog was still at face level, jaws gnashing, but then she dropped from sight. An instant later, the animal reappeared, bug-eyed with frustration because the chain had stopped her just short of the car. She was jumping, her claws scrabbling against metal, trying to snatch a piece of me before gravity yanked her back to the ground.

I was atop a wrecked car, I realized. Its windshield was shattered, its metal so traumatized by collision, its roof creaked beneath my weight when I got to my knees, then my feet. I looked around, trying to understand what had just happened, while the pit bull barked and leaped and slathered itself into a frenzy. For now, though, I was safe-unless the chain broke. But was there a way to get back to my SUV? Still in shock, I had to think it through methodically.

Yes, there was a way to escape… if I scampered off the trunk of the car and stayed close to the trailer. But the chain’s perimeter circled perilously close to the gate. I was gauging the distance when I remembered the leather organizer I had been carrying. It contained my ID, a pad to take notes, plus a fine Kate Spade billfold that had been given to me by a friend. And… my cell phone!

Damn it. I couldn’t leave all that behind!

I got down on my knees and infuriated the alpha female even more by peering over the side, where I saw weeds and a crumpled Marlboro carton but no leather organizer. That’s when I remembered something else that had been displaced by panic during the last few seconds: someone had switched off the shredding machine… and the gate wasn’t locked.

Where were the people who worked here?

“Hello!” I called tentatively at first, then yelled over the barking of the pit bull, “Who owns this dog?”

I didn’t expect an answer but I got it.

“Same person who owns the goddamn property you’re trespassin’ on!” A bully’s voice that came from the back of the lot. Then the man laughed, “By god, woman, you got some legs on you! You can run, I’ll give you that. But you just cost me ten bucks!”

I stood and searched the junkyard until I found two men, not one, at the back of the lot. Both tall, one skinny, the other man huge, with a massive face beneath a ZZ Top beard of gray and a belly that gave shape to his coveralls. The men had hands on hips and both were chuckling as if they’d shared some private joke while standing near a hill of tires and a machine, the words Moline Industrial Shredder stenciled on a yellow feeding hopper.

I hollered back, “Your dog almost bit me!”

“Good! That’s what she’s paid to do!” It was the bully graybeard. He was lumbering toward me and still laughing as he said to his partner, “Goddamn, most folks’ll jump up on that Chevy every time. Leave it to a woman to choose a Lincoln!”

Hilarious-both men roared.

What were they talking about? I looked around until I understood. Junked cars had been jammed tight into the lot. I could have chosen a rusting Chevy Malibu as refuge, but I had climbed onto the car next to it because it had looked bigger, higher off the ground-a Lincoln, apparently.