Dennis Yates - Minus Tide

Cyclops thumbed the cork off a small bottle and drank. The last time he’d crossed this line of his iron web he’d just been freshly robbed and beaten by a group of hobos in Baker City and left to die. He’d come to when the next train came through and managed to haul himself inside a boxcar even with a broken arm and several mashed fingers. And it wasn’t until later that he discovered his attackers had hopped the same train that night instead of taking his money and getting drunk like he’d heard them talking about. Before the train reached Salt Lake he’d killed them all.

Sheriff Dawkins lay on some molding hay, not sleeping but just gazing out of the boxcar at the landscape sliding past. His appearance had already changed a lot, Cyclops noted. In the short time they’d spent on the rails, the sheriff’s clothes were going baggy and his thinning body was becoming brown and muscular and he’d already acquired an impressive collection of recent scars. As the nicotine fits died away he also seemed more relaxed and reflective. His sense of smell had started to return and he’d begun seeing with his nose like Cyclops had taught him.

“What are you going to do to the kid when we find him?” The sheriff asked. But he already knew.

Cyclops pulled his curtain of hair aside and looked at him. “You got something in mind?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t think about it too much. If he’s too dumb to know how to disappear then the money he stole shouldn’t be hard to find either. Son of a bitch has got a real pair on him if you want my opinion. Too bad they’ll be the first things he watches me take from him.”

The sheriff sat up and rubbed his face where the flies kept tickling him. “I’ve known that kid since he was young. Other than having a smart mouth he was never really much trouble. I guess I rode him kind of hard though. But I had to do something so I could get up to his house once in a while and talk to his folks. His older sister had some nice curves on her and I’ll be damned if she didn’t know what she was doing to me.”

Cyclops nodded and took another drink. He didn’t offer any to the sheriff. He was beginning to tire of his company, of listening to him talk about his obsession with young women. But that was the way it always went when you joined the life. Some things took longer than others to fade away.

It had become a hot day after the fog had burned off and Tammy had somehow gotten way ahead of her.

“Hey, what’s the rush!” Ann shouted.

The outgoing tide had really picked up. Ann watched Tammy get smaller in the distance while seals popped up to the surface, their dark heads glimmering in the sun. She’s just anxious to get back to shore, Ann thought. Wants to get in her sunbathing fix while she can.

Well I’m in no rush to get burned.

Ann pulled her paddles into her kayak and lay back while the water below pulled her toward the mouth of the jetty still a mile away. She stared at the green-blue water and watched the patterns of crescent-shaped silver until it made her feel drowsy.

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift until she felt she’d become like the light itself.

She still slept better during the daytime when there were fewer shadows for her to worry over. Although her leg had healed, the doctor said the rest would take more time. The sleeping pills he prescribed for her didn’t seem to work more than a few hours, and she often found herself getting up and turning on all the lights in her room and reading until morning.

He promised you she wouldn’t come back.

Ann remembered his arms holding her as he hiked up the switchbacks, watching as his fast stride caused the forest shapes above them to blur. When she’d tried to wriggle free, he’d held her tighter and warned her not to move and she smelled his foul breath and thought she was going to be sick. But she asked him what was happening anyway, and Cyclops told her she had nothing to worry about anymore, that she’d never see him or her mother again.

And yet it didn’t seem to make a difference. She had been scared of the dark, especially on nights when she could hear coyotes up in the woods, until one night the herd of elk came through the neighborhood, eating from the unprotected vegetable gardens. She’d seen their shadows from her window. She hadn’t seen any since the night she’d found the dead one off the highway.

She got dressed and followed them all night as they finished their pillaging and moved back into the woods where she could only keep up with them briefly before losing them in the dense undergrowth but not before they stopped for awhile and watched her and she saw in their eyes the thing that took away the fear.

For a flash second Ann didn’t know where she was. Her kayak wobbled as she found her balance again. She looked around and was surprised to see how far she’d drifted down the bay. On a small sliver of a beach Tammy lay on her back, her blue kayak drying next to her.

Ann dipped her paddles and headed for shore.

James sat on his bed and cleaned the.38. It was dark out already and he could hear insects outside.

He kept inside the motel during the days. He’d seen the Twin Falls police come by a few times to break up some loud parties but they’d never bothered him. Yet he got the sense that he should think about moving on. He couldn’t escape the feeling that he was being watched.

And then one night while he’d gone out to buy some groceries someone had broken into his room. They hadn’t found the money he’d stashed but they did go through some stuff that would tell them who he was and where he was from and if they wanted to look further they’d find out what he’d done and then make big trouble for him some day.

He left the gun on the bed and went to check on the courtyard. He could see people out in the dark smoking and drinking. It was a warm night and he could hear some kids being told that the pool was going to close in ten minutes. Since the air conditioning didn’t work he left the window open just a crack. It would be impossible to sleep during the night. He usually couldn’t until after he heard the morning cars leave.

When James lay back on the bed he listened to the sounds around him. The couple next door had finally quieted down and the woman had left afterwards and the man was now on the phone talking. Someone had tried his door until they realized their mistake. They hadn’t known that he was standing behind it with his gun ready. When they went away he lay back down again.

Sleep was never a pleasurable thing to James like it was to some people. But when he started to drift off he thought he heard the sound of Shoshone Falls and after a while he imagined the ocean again and wondered how long it would hold him in its grasp.

He heard the train come by. But this time it stopped, and he imagined with it the cargo of his nightmares.