Bryan Gruley - The Skeleton Box

“We’re calling your bluff, Breck,” D’Alessio said. “Just let Tex go. We’ll leave you alone. We might even put in a good word for you on your property taxes. We all know somebody on the appeals board.”

“You can forbear, Mr. Candidate,” Breck said. “Matthew is not here.”

“Where’s Dingus?” Soupy whispered.

“Good question,” I said. “Maybe he’s afraid to follow D’Alessio’s lead.”

D’Alessio stepped toward Breck. “If you’ve taken Tex somewhere against his will-”

“It’s you who are trying to take from us against our will,” Breck said. “We have sought recourse and been denied our rights to due process.”

“What about due process for Phyllis Bontrager, sir?” someone yelled, then somebody else, “You ought to be the one in jail, Breck. Where were you Sunday night?”

Breck was unmoved “We are law-abiding citizens,” he said. “We ask to be left alone. You violate our land in your vanity. You seek to empty our pockets in your greed. You imprison one of us in your vengefulness. You are sinners. Your fathers were sinners, and their fathers before them.” I thought of his grandfather, the sharpened spoon tearing into his neck, the blood washing into the water swirling pink in the shower drain.

D’Alessio took another step forward and pointed up the hill. “Looks like you’re the ones violating the land,” he said. “Still looking for that septic field?”

I saw Whistler sliding away from the crowd and ducking behind one of the trailers at the opposite end of the clearing.

“That’s far enough, Frank.”

Jody Frost stepped away from her trailer and raised her shovel like an ax. She and Frankie had had a tumultuous dalliance some years back, with rumors of sex in his sheriff’s cruiser involving, of course, his handcuffs and baton. After Jody broke up with him, he kept pulling her over for minor traffic infractions and telling her she’d better take him back or she might wind up in jail. The last time he stopped her, she grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into the car and kissed him, thrusting her tongue hard into his mouth while rolling the window up on his neck, trapping him, and locking the door. Then she turned the radio up full blast, climbed out the passenger side, and walked home while D’Alessio screamed over the music. Nearly two hours passed before a state trooper happened upon poor Frankie, still screaming, his face smeared with lipstick. The trooper laughed so hard that it took him a few minutes to free Frankie, who never bothered Jody Frost again.

Now D’Alessio gave her an uneasy grin. “Hello there, darling,” he said.

“Jody,” Breck said. “This man is no threat to anyone but himself.”

“Really?” D’Alessio said. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

Breck addressed the townspeople. “This is what matters to you?” I leaned into the gap between the trailers, looking for Whistler; I’d lost him. “A hockey game? You’ve lost one of your own, another two are in jail, and this is what matters? Perhaps even God cannot help you.”

The crowd started yelling again and moving toward Breck. “Get back, goddammit,” Jody yelled, stepping toward them, the blade of the shovel next to her head. “You’re scaring our kids.”

Breck turned to her. “Stay where you are, please, Ms. Frost.”

“Thank you, Mr. Breck,” D’Alessio said. “She’s a spunky one.”

Jody glared first at D’Alessio, then at Breck, threw her shovel to the ground, and stomped back inside her trailer, slamming the door.

“Look,” D’Alessio said. “We’re trying to meet you halfway here.” The mob hear-heared. “Let Tex go and we’ll put some pressure on Dingus to let Tatch go. Hell, nobody thinks he did anything anyway.”

Breck took his wire-rims off, wiped them on his sweater, put them back on. “You are a fool, Mr. Candidate,” he said. “Surrounded by fools. Matthew and the rest of us want nothing to do with you or your pathetic schemes.”

Soupy poked me in the shoulder. “Trap.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Look, idiot.”

I turned and saw Whistler scrabbling up the hill behind us. He fell to one hand, then an elbow as his sneakers slipped in the snow and mud. He stopped at the backhoe and wrote something in his notebook. Then he disappeared behind it. I turned back to Breck.

“You are on private property,” Breck told the throng. “I am asking you to remove yourselves now.”

“Or you’re gonna do what, mister?” someone shouted.

“How about we remove you, huh?” someone else cried.

The door on Jody’s trailer swung open and she came bounding out, wearing a camouflage jacket, hair pulled away from her face in a rubber-band ponytail. Instead of a shovel, she was holding a double-barreled shotgun. She stopped halfway across the clearing and raised it to her shoulder, aimed in the direction of the throng. They gasped as one. “Call the police,” someone shouted, and I saw cell phones come out, people punching keys.

“No,” Breck said, turning to Jody. “We are not them, Jody. Please. Put the gun away.”

“We’ve been pushed around enough,” she said.

“Listen to him, Jody,” D’Alessio said. “You’re just going to get yourself in trouble.”

She leveled the barrel at D’Alessio. “Back off, fuckface.”

D’Alessio looked at Breck. “‘Fuckface,’ eh? That some new born-again-”

The boom of the shotgun cut him off and sent the crowd shrieking and diving into the snow, jumping behind trailers, racing down the two-track and off into the woods. D’Alessio keeled over backward into the mud. I clutched at the trailer next to me for balance and stepped into the clearing. Jody had lifted the barrel so that her shot flew into the sky. But D’Alessio remained on his back, apparently unconscious, perhaps fainted. I froze, watching to see if Jody, smirking at the fallen D’Alessio, would shoot again.

Only Breck saw Tex.

The boy burst from the trailer door behind another woman, almost knocking her down. “Dammit!” she screamed, while Breck swiveled and crouched for a tackle. Tex was barefoot in long johns and a T-shirt. “Tex,” I yelled as Soupy pushed out from behind me and moved into the clearing.

Tex started first toward the scattering townspeople, but Breck scrambled over to cut him off, so Tex swerved and almost slipped down but held his feet and sprinted at Soupy and me, his eyes not seeing us, his feet churning snow, Breck gaining on him. I heard women and men bellowing from the other side of the clearing, some of the voices coming closer, Tex yelling as he ran, “Get away from me!”

Breck was close enough to try a flying tackle when Soupy jumped in front of him and threw a hip check that would have made a Red Wing proud. Breck flopped sideways with a grunt. He was back on his feet in an instant and, before Soupy could get his hands up, smacked Soupy hard in the shoulder with the heel of a hand. Soupy toppled over and I stepped up and took a run at Breck, but he jumped aside and I spilled face-first into the snow. Breck started up the hill as I got to my feet. “Don’t do it, Matthew,” he called out. “You are not their servant.”

Jody Frost was shouting, “I’ll shoot, dammit, I’ll shoot again,” as the Fleders and Clayton Perlmutter ran past her in pursuit of Breck. “Get that man,” Perlmutter wheezed, a few steps behind the Fleders as they gained on Breck. The shotgun went off again. There was more screaming. Everyone but Tex and Breck flung themselves facedown in the snow. “Goddammit, Jody,” Bart Fleder yelled. “You got some balls.”

We all jumped up and started scrambling again up the slippery ridge, but Breck had nearly caught the barefoot, half-naked boy who wanted to play a game of hockey. Tex weaved left and then right and then left again, dodging the ditches, slipping Breck’s grasp. “Stop now, Matthew,” Breck kept calling, but Tex kept plowing up the hill through the twilight. About twenty yards beyond him I spied Luke Whistler, peering out from between a pair of birches on one side of the gullies, scribbling in his notebook.