Don Bruns - Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

“You hit him pretty hard. We should at least see if he’s alive.”

“He was going to shoot us. I had to do something.”

“If you hadn’t hit him, we probably wouldn’t be here right now.” He surprised me. I can’t ever remember James actually giving Em much credit for anything and he’d thanked her twice tonight.

“I didn’t know what else to do.” Em shrugged her shoulders.

“I know this sounds strange,” James sounded hesitant, “but there was something that struck me about what we saw behind the tent.”

“Strange?” Everything about what we saw had been very strange, sick, and perverted.

“I said that. Scripted, staged.”

“No, man. Something wasn’t there.”

“What?” Em didn’t like James’s drawn-out explanations any more than I did.

“Something Cashdollar has with him morning, noon, and night.”

“James.” He was starting to piss me off.

“Think about it. What does he always have with him?”

I thought about it for a moment. Cashdollar was always dressed well, worked a crowd well -

“What are you talking about?” Em threw her hands up.

“You’ve never seen Cashdollar, in person or in pictures, without his gold Bible. Am I right?”

We both thought for a moment. Even going back ten years ago with Uncle Buzz, I remember that the preacher, who turned out to be Cashdollar, carried a Bible tightly clutched in his hand. He never, ever let that gold Bible out of his sight, and almost never out of his touch. When he came down to our truck, he carried the gold Bible. Tonight, or rather this morning, there had been no sign of the gold Bible.

The three of us looked at each other, wondering what it all meant. We’d just witnessed an attempted murder, a killing, and we’d all three been involved in bashing someone in the face and taking his gun. And here we were, standing behind the truck that was supposed to make James and me wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations.

We couldn’t ignore the situation, since we’d become part of it. It was very iffy to take the story to a higher authority, and I didn’t think the three of us were strong enough to take matters into our own hands. There weren’t any other options I could think of.

As the sun made its first appearance of the day, breaking a brilliant tangerine orange over the horizon, we heard the sirens. They were in the distance, but getting closer. I had a good idea of where they were headed.

“Y ou look.” Em stood back from the truck.

James watched from a distance. Halfway between our vehicle and the donut wagon.

Crayer’s pink apron was draped over the counter where he served the fried dough, as if he’d just taken it off. I walked around Crayer’s trailer and noticed the door to the inside was ajar. I should be the one with the pistol. Something to defend myself. I kept thinking that someone who had been smashed in the face with a cast-iron skillet would not be in the best of spirits. And I’d already witnessed a death this morning, and I wasn’t looking forward to another one. Especially mine. But Em held the gun. James had looked at the weapon and said it was almost identical to Stan’s Smith and Wesson.

I eased the door open. James and I had lifted him up the two metal stairs that led to his wagon and had put him on the floor. Then we’d tied him with some sort of plastic rope we’d found in his trailer. Now, he wasn’t there. I stopped for a moment, thinking I was mistaken. Could we have moved him somewhere else? I looked around the inside of the small trailer. Nobody. No body. Someone had found him and moved him, unless he’d regained consciousness, found a way to cut the plastic rope, and walked away. For some reason I doubted that had happened.

“Well?” Em asked in a hushed voice.

I turned around and shrugged.

“What?”

James echoed the line. “What?”

“He’s not here.”

Now they said it together. “What?”

I climbed down. The sirens were nearing the causeway. My guess was we had two or three minutes before they would enter the park, a couple of minutes before they reached the big yellow tent.

“What about Crayer’s tent?” James asked.

“What about it?”

“Maybe somebody cut him loose and he went back there.”

“Then that’s the last place I think we want to be.” Em still gripped the pistol, and in all of the confusion and fear, there was something strangely erotic about Emily and a gun. Don’t ask me to explain it.

I don’t know what possessed me, but I suggested the last place we wanted to be. “I think we need to know if Crayer is okay. If that means going to the tent — ”

“He tried to kill us.” Em raised her voice. “If he does die, it was self-defense.”

“We need to know.” I didn’t argue with her very often, but this time it seemed important. “In a couple of minutes there are going to be cops swarming over this place and maybe FBI, and it just seems to me we’ve added one more layer of complication. We need to get our act together.”

“Then you go.” She handed the pistol to me, handle first.

I took it, feeling the heft. Cold steel and plastic inserts in the handle. It was important. We’d been through a lot during the night and I needed some closure. At least on Crayer.

“Are you really going by yourself?” Em gave me a questioning look.

“I’m going. I need to see if he’s alive.” I pushed the pistol into my belt and pulled my T-shirt down over the bulge. I had no idea why I was so adamant about Crayer’s tent, but I was. I needed to know if he was dead or alive. I turned and walked toward the camper village, and nobody tried to stop me. I believe they felt a sense of guilt too, and we needed to know if we’d been involved in killing someone, self-defense or not.

The flap on the tent was pulled down, but it wasn’t tied. A couple of early risers walked by me, nodding, as they headed toward the portable restrooms. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette when approaching a tent. Obviously you couldn’t knock. Did you shout out? “Hey, Bruce, sorry about bashing your face in. Can I come in and see how you’re doing?”

The early light cast my long shadow as I approached the small green tent. I patted the pistol, wondering if I’d ever use it if needed. Flip the flap? Shout out? I was five feet from the entrance, wondering if I should even bother.

“Bruce? Crayer? Are you in there?”

No sound.

“Bruce?”

There was a rustling. Something was moving inside the tent. My hand brushed the pistol, as if I had a clue what to do with it. At best, it would look impressive to someone. It might frighten someone off.

I stood there for a moment, then gathering all the courage I had, I raised the flap. The rustling stopped and I froze. Now what?

“Bruce?”

The gauze was unzipped and as I leaned down, it parted. Daron Styles stuck his head out. “Hey, Skip. So you’re looking for him too?”

W hen my father left home, things sort of fell apart. It’s not that they’d been going so well before then, but my working mother and little sister seemed to hang out in their own world, and I was left to figure out what was left of mine. James became the brother and the family that I never had. And because he became such an important part of my life, I forgave a lot that James did because he was family, the only real family I know. So, in some perverse way, I have to forgive friends of the family. Like Daron. Thank God there aren’t too many of them.

“Where the hell did you disappear to? You break into the trailer, almost kill someone, then leave Em and me to cover it up?”

The sirens were much louder now.