George Wier - The Last Call

“What do you want with us?” I asked.

Agent Cranford coughed once into one of his meaty hands.

“I want to know where the still is,” he said. “Miss Simmons, you can tell us that much, can’t you?”

“It moves around,” she said. She was lying. I knew it. Hank knew it. Either she didn’t trust Cranford and Bruce or there was something she didn’t want them to know.

“Okay,” Cranford said. “So where was it the last time you saw it?”

“I didn’t ever see it,” she said. “Look. That’s all I’m going to say. Nothing more until I have Jessica. You could get him on that. On kidnapping.”

“Not technically,” Agent Bruce said. “You left her.”

“I put her on a bus!” She said, a little too loudly. The few other patrons in the diner turned their heads.

“I put her on a bus,” Julie said again through her teeth.

“Fine,” Agent Cranford said. “You put her on a bus. We can’t help you there.”

“Then we have nothing more to talk about,” she said. She looked at me, tilted her head and tried to smile. It was my cue.

“Okay,” I said. “You fellahs take it easy.”

Agent Bruce tossed off the last of his coffee and put his cup down quickly. Agent Cranford stood up.

At first I thought he was going to offer to shake hands with me, but instead he gave me a business card.

“Call me,” he said. “I won’t be too far away.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Hank said.

They left.

I had to cover their coffee tab.

It was after midnight and I had just put a couple of motel rooms on my American Express card in Childress.

In the balmy Texas night, bats darted to and fro gobbling down moths and mosquitoes in the parking lot lights, and Julie stood behind me in the doorway in just her bra and panties, waiting for me to come inside and be good to her.

Inside the room, lights off, the blackness near complete, Julie and I once more got into the act; doing what teenagers and old married folks and even animals do.

And sleep came.

I had dreams in which old truck drivers adopt little kids and barbecue tastes like new money. And then I had the dream.

My dad and I were fishing in the late afternoon. The mosquitoes had been buzzing in my ears despite several layers of bug spray and the sweat was running down my cheeks and spine. The river was a mirror for the sky, reflecting each cloud, each ray of sunshine perfectly. I was hungry and tired and anxious and I hadn’t had so much as a nibble. I was gazing at the white hemisphere of my cork, floating immobile, as if it were embedded in a sea of glass. I could almost see my reflection in the cork. My line was a strand of angel’s hair or spider-web silk making a series of long, undulating indentations in the water.

The cork went under fast, disappearing into obscurity, into the upside down alien landscape that existed beneath the mirror in which I was fishing.

I felt a tug, a strong pull, and for an instant I got a mental image of my alter-self sitting on an upside-down embankment, pulling with all his strength.

The little Zebco fishing rod nearly pulled free of my hands. I pushed all of my strength down into my fingers, my wrists, my lower arms, my biceps, and pulled back hard. The pulling from down below gave a little and I was winning.

“ Got something?” my father asked, but he said it slowly, like his mouth was filled with Karo syrup or he was on twenty-eight rpms instead of forty-five.

I did have something. Something big. I pulled it further in. I remembered that I could reel-in and pull at the same time. I cranked hard and fast on the reel, my rod bending double. I thought it might snap before I landed what was on the other end.

I got the sense that something was coming up toward me, almost could feel the slickness of it against the cloying, cottony river bottom silt on the embankment below the surface. And what was coming was not a fish.

“ Not a fish,” I tried to tell my dad, only no sound came out. It was like I’d gotten too much peanut butter wedged up against the roof of my mouth.

I saw two white things down under the water as the cork came up into the air, and I could see something waving, as if blown by the wind. It was hair.

The body had been dead in the river for eons. No fish or eel or crawfish would touch it, because the dead hands brushed them away each time they come near. That was why it could pull against me. But I’d snagged it. I was bringing it in.

The two white things were eyes. They were dead and knowing and accusative all at the same time.

When the head broke the surface the eyes blinked at me. The mouth opened and gallons of water spilled out.

It was someone I knew.

“ Oh,” my dad said at Driving Miss Daisy speed, “It’s just a hank. Kill him and throw him back in.”

The hank was reaching for me, green and gray fingers dripping river bottom mud, contorted, grasping at the air just a short space from my ankles.

The hank’s other arm stretched up, dislocated from its shoulder and grasped my hip and squeezed.

It was Julie, squeezing my hip. I’d been nightmaring again.

She shook me.

“Awake,” I managed to mumble. “Ahm awake.”

She stopped.

I turned and curled into her, my stubbly cheek pressing against her soft breast.

She hummed me back to sleep.

I was awake instantly at the sound of the gunshot. Someone was shooting outside our door.

Julie’s eyes were open wide and staring into mine in the gloom. Through cracks in the window curtains I could tell it was almost dawn.

Another window-rattling shot rang out.

I didn’t even think to grab my gun. I thrust my legs into my slacks and didn’t even bother with a shirt. I left Julie twisting in her bed covers and thrusting two pillows against her ears.

Outside. The morning was cool and fine.

Hank was there leaning up against the Suburban. He had a deer-rifle that I’d not seen before and he bolted home another shell as I called out his name.

“Hank! Goddammit! What the hell are you doin’?”

He looked at me. There was a sad and somber look on his face.

His left hand moved and the rifle recoiled down against his leg.

BLAM!

He was already reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniels on the Suburban running-board. Where the hell had he gotten that?

“Got eighteen more to go,” he said, slurring his words almost beyond recognition.

“Eighteen what?” I asked.

He didn’t bother to reply. He reached for another shell. There was an open box of them beside the whiskey bottle.

I noticed Dingo slinking back into the partially opened door of Hank’s motel room, her tail between her legs. Apparently she was not beyond fear, if not downright embarrassment.

“That’s enough,” I said. “Come on, give me the gun.”

“No can do, keem-bo-sobby,” he said. “He deserfs a twenty-one gun salute.”

Clang! He shot the bolt home.

“Who?” I said.

“Dock.”

BLAM!

The shot echoed off the walls of the old tourist court motel. Hank nearly dropped the gun. He was likely to have a nasty bruise on his leg later, the way he was taking all the recoil just south of his hip.

“Hey! Hey!” another voice called out. I turned to look. It was the skinny Pakistani motel clerk. “What you idiots doing?” He wore a pair of flannel long johns and burgundy house slippers.

“Uh. Nothin’” I said. “I’ve got this situation under control.”

BLAM!