James Burke: Swan Peak

He looked up on the bank. The truck was parked in shadow, its headlights sparkling, and Clete could not see through the dark reflection that had pooled in the windshield. He waded up through the shallows until he was on solid ground, then he slipped off his fly vest and laid it on a rock. He set down his fly rod and net and creel and removed his porkpie hat and reset it at a slant on his forehead. He looked at his convertible, where his Smith amp; Wesson.38 rested inside the glove box.

Clete walked to his fire ring and squatted beside it, ignoring the truck and the hammering of the diesel engine. He lifted his coffeepot off a warm stone and poured his coffee into a tin cup, then added condensed milk to it from a can he had punctured with his Swiss army knife. Then he got to his feet again, wiping his hands on his clothes, his eyes shifting back onto the front windows of the truck. He stared for a long time at the truck, drinking his coffee, not moving, his expression benign, his green eyes clear and unblinking.

He wore a charcoal corduroy shirt and faded jeans that were buttoned under his navel. On first glance his massive arms and shoulders and the breadth of his chest gave him a simian appearance, but his top-heavy proportions were redeemed by his height and his erect posture. A pink scar that had the texture and color of a bicycle patch ran through one eyebrow. The scar and his over-the-hill good looks and his little-boy haircut and the physical power that seemed to emanate from his body created a study in contrasts that attracted women to him and gave his adversaries serious pause.

Both front doors of the truck opened, and two men stepped out on the rocks. They were smiling, glancing up at the hilltops, as though they were sharing in Clete’s appreciation of the morning. “Get a little lost?” the driver said.

“Somebody locked the snow gate on the state road, so I turned in here for the night,” Clete said.

“That road is not state-owned. It’s private. But you probably didn’t know that,” the driver said. The accent was slightly adenoidal, perhaps Appalachian or simply Upper South.

“My map shows it as a state road,” Clete said. “Would you mind cutting your engine? I’m starting to get a headache, here.”

The driver’s physique was nondescript, his face lean, his brown hair dry and uncombed, ruffling in the breeze, his smile stitched in place. A half-circle of tiny puncture scars was looped under his right eye, as though a cookie cutter had been pressed into his skin, recessing the eye and dulling the light inside it. His shirt hung outside his trousers. “Have you caught any fish?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Clete replied. He looked at the passenger. “What are you doing?”

The passenger was a hard-bodied, unshaved man. His hair was black and shiny, his dark eyes lustrous, his flannel shirt buttoned at the wrists and throat. He wore canvas trousers with big brads on them and a wide leather belt hitched tightly into his hips. The combination of his unwashed look and the fastidious attention he gave his utilitarian clothes gave him a bucolic aura of authority, like that of a man who wears the smell of his sweat and testosterone as a challenge to others. “I’m writing down your license number, if you don’t have an objection,” he said.

“Yeah, I do object,” Clete said. “Who are you guys?”

The unshaved man with black hair nodded and continued to write on his notepad. “You from Lou’sana? I’m from down south myself. Miss’sippi. You been to Miss’sippi, haven’t you?” he said.

When Clete didn’t reply, the passenger said, “New Orleans flat-ass got ripped off the map, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, the F-word in Louisiana these days is FEMA,” Clete said.

“You got a lot less Afro-Americans to worry about, though,” the passenger said. He rolled the racial designation on his tongue.

“What is this?” Clete said.

“You’re on posted land, is what this is,” the driver said.

“I didn’t see any sign to that effect,” Clete said.

The passenger went to the truck and lifted a microphone off the dash and began speaking into it.

“You guys are running my tag?” Clete said.

“You don’t remember me?” the driver said.

“No.”

“It’ll come to you. Think back about seventeen years or so.”

“Tell you what, I’ll pack up my gear and clear out, and we’ll call it even,” Clete said.

“We’ll see,” the driver said.

“We’ll see ?” Clete said.

The driver shrugged, still grinning.

The passenger finished his call on the radio. “His name is Clete Purcel. He’s a PI out of New Orleans,” he said. “There’s a pair of binoculars on the seat of his convertible.”

“You been spying on us, Mr. Purcel?” the driver said.

“I’ve got no idea who you are.”

“You’re not working for the bunny huggers?” the driver said.

“We’re done here, bub.”

“We need to look inside your vehicle, Mr. Purcel,” the driver said.

“Are you serious?” Clete said.

“You’re on the Wellstone Ranch,” the driver said. “We can have you arrested for trespassing, or you can let us do our job and look in your car. You didn’t have situations like this when you worked security at Tahoe?”

Clete blinked, then pointed his finger. “You were a driver for Sally Dio.”

“I was a driver for the car service he used. Too bad he got splattered in that plane accident.”

“Yeah, a great national tragedy. I heard they flew the flag at half-mast for two minutes in Palermo,” Clete said. He glanced at the black-haired man, who had just retrieved a tool from the truck and was walking back toward Clete’s Caddy with it. “Tell your man there if he sticks that Slim Jim in my door, I’m going to jam it up his cheeks.”

“Whoa, Quince,” the driver said. “We’re going to accept Mr. Purcel’s word. He’ll clean up his camp and be gone-” He paused and looked thoughtfully at Clete. “What, five or ten minutes, Mr. Purcel?”

Clete cleared an obstruction in his windpipe. He poured his coffee on his fire. “Yeah, I can do that,” he said.

“So, see you around,” the driver said.

“I didn’t get your name.”

“I didn’t give it. But it’s Lyle Hobbs. That ring any bells for you?”

Clete kept his expression flat, his eyes empty. “My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

The man who had introduced himself as Lyle Hobbs stepped closer to Clete, his head tilting sideways. “You trying to pull on my crank?”

Clete set his tin coffee cup on the rock next to his Fenwick and slipped his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, as a third-base coach might. Don’t say anything , he told himself.

“You don’t hide your thoughts too good,” the driver said. “You got one of those psychodrama faces. People can read everything that’s in it. You ought to be an actor.”

“You were up on a molestation charge. You did a county stint on it,” Clete said. “The girl was thirteen. She recanted her statement eventually, and you went back to driving for Sally Dee.”

“You got a good memory. It was a bum beef from the jump. I got in the sack with the wrong lady blackjack dealer. Hell hath no fury, know what I mean? But I didn’t drive for Sally Dee. I drove for the service he contracted.”

“Yeah, you bet,” Clete replied, his eyes focused on neutral space.

“Have a good day,” Lyle Hobbs said. His head was still tilted sideways, his grin still in place. His impaired eye seemed to have the opaqueness and density of a lead rifle ball.

“Same to you,” Clete said. He began to take down his tent and fold it into a neat square while the two visitors to his camp backed their truck around. The back of his neck was hot, his mouth dry, his blood pounding in his ears and wrists. Walk away, walk away, walk away , a voice in his head said. He heard the oversize truck tires crunch on the rocks, then the steel bumper scrape across stone. He turned around in time to see one wheel roll over his Fenwick rod and grind the graphite shanks and the lightweight perforated reel and the aluminum guides and the double-tapered floating line into a pack rat’s nest.